Dictatorship of Optimism

The cycle of violence is not violence begets violence. That simple chain can really be found no where except in the Three Stooges. The real world's violence does not and can not stand on its own. For a system of repression and inequality to persist it needs not just violence, but pacifism.

Abusers are always and have always been propped up by ranks of cowards, experts either at spin or at looking the other way. They need the screen these personalities provide to conduct their violence, and, as mass media has shown, wherever this veil is weakened it becomes harder and harder on the abuser. This is true in the microcosm as well. Show me one abusive parent without a spineless spouse allowing them to run rampant (or a complete lack there of) and I'll eat my own shirt. These two, the abuser and the 'pacifist' exist as two halves of the same cycle. At the height of her cowardice the pacifist wants to exempt themselves from the cycle. They want to stand outside and be 'against' the abuser even though their 'against' implies no action.

It is our unremitting focus on the obvious abuser that allows his actions to continue. Even when we succeed in eliminating him, through no help of the pacifists, another will spring up to take his place immediately. Why? The same reason a tumor resprouts in the lung of someone who continues to smoke -- the environment hasn't changed. We can not beat, we can not even lessen, violence by the methods we employ. Its like trying to solve the problem by eliminating all assholes. Well I'm sad to say there will probably always be assholes. However, one thing that might not be so timeless is our acceptance of and willingness to condone their behavior.

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If you consider yourself an optimist, please do me and the world a favor and shoot yourself. Not very nice, I know, but I don't do nice anymore. All I have left is honest, so I tell you honestly if you are an optimist you would do us all a great favor by terminating your influence on the world.

There is no optimism. There is no pessimism. There is only truth: real, grizzly, unadulterated, dripping, bleeding, shitting, farting truth. Do you think the universe in all its pangalactic glory cares about the way we monkeys think things should work or the way things should be? In New York ten children burn up alive because their family was so poor all of them had to sleep stuffed in a crowded attic. What's good about that? Where is the optimist when she hears things like this, turning off the radio that's where. So I ask you, how can one respect a perspective that requires the active filtration of data to maintain it?

I don't want to turn off the radio. I wanna roll around crying in those children's ashes, I want to feel their bones and think about their wordless terror and unimaginable pain as the flames consumed their young flesh. Go ahead optimist, please stop reading. Find some slick worded screw to put your faith behind, someone like...well.. name any person with any amount of social influence outside of the disenfranchised.

The optimists and the abusers are united by one simple mandate, one which drives their every word and action, at least in public spheres: MAKE THINGS LOOK NICE. The abusers need to make everything look nice for the obvious reason that their hands are drenched in blood otherwise. The need driving the optimists, is less stratagem and more psychology. The optimist has been hypnotized into thinking her perspective on reality is what makes reality. Thank you, you new agey mouth horns for perverting this most essential of truths. Yes perspective does build reality, but when the foundation of that perspective is lie and calculated omission I don't care how grand a castle you build it will eventually crumble. This happens to all abusive systems, of course, at which point another incarnates to replace it.

~~~

Pacifists and violent abusers are locked together in a sordid symbiosis that goes back to the beginning of this shitstorm we call civilization. One does the wrecking, the other does the sweeping up. Its natural really for pacifists are cowards and a coward will always look for the weakest target. In our dog eat dog honorless society, abusers quickly travel up the ranks. Their technique of total ruthlessness and hidden agendas work best in a competitive system, all other things being equal. Therefore very few who champion evil could be called powerless despite the fact that many might feel so (in fact the feeling of powerlessness is an almost universal trait among those who abuse). Even the weakest of the 'species', child beaters and rapists, are physically dangerous. None present easy targets. Its much easier to attack the good because the good shows restraint and compassion while the evil knows none. This is why when someone stands up proudly to attack an abuser barrages of criticism will assail him from the weak and petulant, counter attacks coming from everywhere where courage is lacking. The abuser doesn't need to worry about this because his sycophants are all either on the take, or for the chastity of their own ears, turning off their radio to that which would indite him. Moreover, the pacifists get a special sort of ego boost by embracing the worst of villains; part and parcel of their misguided attempt to make us all 'get along.'

You may have noticed that when speaking of the abusers I use the masculine and when speaking of the optimists I use the feminine. This is not because I think the gender lines are always laid out so, but because they almost always are and in ancient history this was even more true. Think about ancient Mesopotamia, the first empire. Its soldiers, when they went out laying claim to new territory, murdered, raped and put entire villages to the torch. Every empire for centuries after followed similar tactics. When we study these societies we learn all the gory details. The abusers are indited as they always are, but the non violent contribution is left unanalyzed. Who consoled these soldiers when they went home? Who took their murdering bodies to a warm bed? Who taught their children his hateful ideology? How many of the wives of such men up through the ages, do you think, would have accepted what their husbands did in the name of country. None of them, which is why the technique of denial used by women to this day was invented. Were I able to bring a cam-corder with me back in time and show them the brutal acts of their spouses I would have likely been burnt at the stake as a witch and this too would be all well and good.

That has been the pattern of humanity since one little tribe in the middle of a blasted desert that they themselves created decided to expand outward. Its never stopped, even now. Men commit violence and women condone it. Men commit violence, women condone it. Look with open eyes, I dare you to try not seeing this pattern again and again. Even in our 'modern' age if anything has changed its only that you are now given the choice regardless of your gender to be a commiter or a condoner of violence. Most women still elect to be condoners and in the 'civilized' world many men join them since now our systems of control have become refined enough that very few people are actually needed to commit violence, not that those who choose this path can't access other more familial arenas for their acts of aggression.

In the home the pattern is the same among so many abusive families. The male commits the violence and the woman either verbally defends or more often than not tacitly condones him. “He'll change.” “He's doing his best.” “Work is really hard now.” In my ancestral culture, the Norse, women ruled their household and were the law within its walls, and men so cowardly as to throttle a child would be the lowest of the low if they were even allowed their lives. Mine, however, is a pagan culture, one which predates that cyclic shit storm which rolled out of the Middle East and wrapped up the whole world in its madness.

~~~

Are you going to call me a misogynist? Maybe you should. I am generally disgusted with the condoners and that by and large means women. The greatest spell ever cast on this human species was the one which convinced women that they are weak because a man can lift more weight. The old societies of Europe knew better and there, before the Aryan and later the Christian incursions, you found women as judges, priests, and leaders. These weren't beauty's exerting influence only to the extent that they could manipulate a man's emotions. They weren't just token symbols of their sex either, nor men with vaginas as is so often the case today in politics and business. These were strong voices openly asserting themselves, enforcing the balancing perspective of their sex upon their cultures, not playing a shadow game in a world ruled by men.

The hidden truth is that women are in fact stronger than men. When some feminist tries to defend the choices of women in the past saying they had no choice or no power I have to laugh. Their very assessment is covertly depriving women of choice and freedom, the very thing they accuse male chauvinists of doing. Women are only brain-washed into believing in their frailty and we are all, regardless of gender responsible for what we choose to believe, especially about ourselves. You think strong is in muscle mass? Strong hasn't meant muscle since the invention of the bow and arrow and in my opinion it didn't even mean it when we were just swinging clubs. In fact, in all sexually reproducing species it is the female that determines the larger course of the species development and evolutionary direction. Males each come to the fore packing a uncountable numbers of sperm where each woman has only a limited number of eggs to ensure her reproductive destiny. Its pure mathematics, there will always be greater competition amongst males than females. This is why nearly all females across the animal family tend to be coy and selective, while males, quite frankly, are ready to deposit their sperm in any vessel that will receive it. Why do you think we see always the male in nature with bright colorings, flashy head gear, and catchy markings? The female influence upon the species is so strong that these traits evolve simply because she favors them.

Women have no power? Please don't say it again until I stop eating, your gonna make me choke on my ramen. No one with a thorough biology education could believe such a ridiculous statement but in our patriarchal culture, it glides as effortlessly as a paper air plane on steam. Helping it is the fact that women have been duped in this regard for many centuries, so most rally to support the delusion through their words and actions. Optimists help to. They don't want to tell an abused woman or the mother of an abused child that she always had the power to stop the violence and only her cowardice and her misconception of her own potential stopped her, that wouldn't be nice.

Want to stop abuse, do you have a daughter? Train her how to shoot a gun. Start with sling shots as early as possibly. A woman has every right to defend herself and our culture tells her that she should learn martial arts to do so. What a joke. For years I was a wrestler and I sucked at it. Why? My technique was good, but I lacked then, as I have always lacked, upper body strength. I learned first hand how difficult it is to beat an opponent in a grapple when he out weighs and out bench presses you and the strength disparity I experienced was only a fraction of what a battered woman experiences. Teach your daughter how to shoot. Don't believe Hollywood when they show you a 120lb model walking around and ax kicking the crap out of 300 lb thugs. Sorry hun, physics just don't work like that. Fortunately the fact that the female visual cortex comes to maturity earlier than a man's ensures that, all other things being a equal, a woman trained at a young age will out shoot her male counter part. This is why I say women have been the stronger sex since the bow and arrow. Their refusal to acknowledge it does not make it false.

~~~

You may have noticed I am more focused on the condoners than the commiters of violence. 'What about them?' your well trained mind prompts, 'they're the real criminals.' Of course they are but what's the purpose of pointing out a wolf slavering right in front of you. We can all see the wolf and if I attacked it I'd only join the millions who'd already flung their spears to no avail. Plus, the wolf is ready for attack, its hide is thick and scarified, its suspicious muscles twitching at every nerve ending. Its point, its very reason for being, is to be attacked. So I'll tell you what I'm going to do instead. I'm walking right past the wolf. In fact other than acknowledging its presence and obvious murders, I'm going to ignore it entirely. Instead I'm gonna track it right back to its den pull out each and every one of those fluffy little pups and smash their skulls on the rocks. I won't weep, I won't even shed a tear. Truth be told, I'll be laughing.

How did America get the Japanese to surrender in World War II? They brought the war in all its grizzly horror right home to the island. Don't get me wrong, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were cowardly acts committed by a nation which had either no honor to begin with or had lost it somewhere in the fight over all those petty little pieces of beach. None the less, it points to a truth. To defeat some systems one needs to focus not on what the systems presents to be fought but on what lies behind, powering it -- the soft under belly so to speak. Broadly speaking the soft underbelly that supports tyrants everywhere at each strata of society are cowards to weak to stand up against the enemy in their midst. Instead they watch others stand and get slaughtered while they keep their head down, nodding in tacit obedience, to the very thing they preach against.

When I speak of abusers and pacifists I'm not talking about anything divisible like nations, races or ethnicities. What I'm talking about are basal personality types that pervade all levels of human society. What I'm talking about are individuals. All are fostered by our culture but their potentiality lies in our make up. One must learn to see, to really hear the people around oneself and understand their motivations. The vast majority of us just want to live and be left alone, but some are not happy unless they have people under their thumb. These demons in the flesh are so plain to me even in their glossiest word clothing that I find it hard to imagine why we've been duped into allowing them to control human destiny for so many centuries. Look where these so called leaders and prophets have brought us: to the edge of extinction. Look at the world which comes out of their ceaseless scrapping with one another for power: a global gladiatorial arena, a world of riches where masses starve. But as I've tried so hard to tell you, the answer does not lie in beating these few (even though it is fortunately sometimes necessary to beat them). It lies instead in the vast majority -- the grinning, hopeful sycophants that want so much to believe everything will be alright that they are constantly doing the work of spinning shit into gold for those in power.

Want to make the world a better place, say 'no' more often. People need to hear 'no' more often, especially the ruling classes be they kings, brahmins, presidents, bosses, parents or players. Start saying 'no' and start embracing your freedom. Your boss tells you to do something against your conscience, tell him to go fuck himself and walk, its a sexy feeling. Even sexier is using your inside knowledge of his company's dirty laundry to bring it crashing down around him. I don't care how low on the totem pole you are, through uncompromising morality you can change the world. See a man smack his kid or his wife, go kick his ass. The cop who arrests you will probably give you a pat on the back in private and that kid or woman will have learned in the most vivid way possible that one person can stand up to abuse. See a company wrecking the land introduce their vehicles' engines to the wonders of particle friction. What's the worst that can happen. Imprisonment? Freedom is in the mind not in the body, it is not a thing that can be taken away by anyone. Death? What could be less fear inspiring than an unavoidable eventuality.

~~~

I need to go back and watch the old John Wayne movies from my childhood. After adolescence I parted ways with the Duke. I was sick of patriotism at that point and as an amateur student of western history I couldn't deal with the flagrant inaccuracies in his films. But flag waving and Native American misrepresentation aside, there was something in John Wayne that is lacking in our heroes today and in ourselves. The Duke did not care about compromise or image. He did not get his ethics from someone else, hell I hardly ever heard him talk about Jesus and that's something for an actor in his day with his audience. Wayne's moral compass, at least in his movies, was internal. It takes a great inner strength not only to identify evil, but to face it. Here again I am not talking about people and events over a distance. One of the reasons we have become so turned around when it comes to good and evil is because we attempt to apply these concepts abstractly and against those we know only through the media and other second hand sources. Show me a man or woman face to face, show me their actions, let me look them in the eye, then and only then might I feel I know the content of their character. Our arrogance is not in applying the terms good and evil but in applying them over a distance. Our continued failure in doing so is used by the pacifists to proclaim the ineptitude of 'black and white' thinking, and in a way they're right. Good and evil were never terms meant to be used abstractly. When they are, we have the recipe for genocide, war and all other manner of mass murder. However, when used at the local face to face level they are the very mortar that keeps our societies honest.

Conservatives are ever throwing good and evil around, against other religion, against media personalities, against other nations, none of which they have any first hand contact with. This is why the core of our country is rotten. We spend so much time judging and meddling outside the borders of our immediate surroundings and ourselves that we allow the very monsters we so love to hate to hover directly over us. The liberals as usual are just gnawing at the lie from the opposite end. They try to reject the concepts of good and evil entirely and snuggle up to a comforting but ultimately illusory philosophy that we can all get along. There is no getting along with some people unless you are under their boot or have your heel on them. Some people are predators and see other human beings as nothing more than a resource to be used or a pawn to be manipulated. Like individual tumor cells they need to be isolated and if not destroyed illuminated with spotlight intensity for what they are. Unfortunately or fortunately, there is no doing this at a distance. It's John Wayne style or nothing. In the Duke's own words, “I won't be wronged, I won't be insulted, I won't be laid a hand on. I won't do these things to other people and I require the same of them.”

So this is my challenge to you. Forget keeping politicians honest, keep yourself and those around you honest and let the politicians worry about themselves. The abusers of power at the top are dependent on a chain of sycophants going all the way down, each one of them a less ballsy replica of the one above. The only way to break the chains is locally with people standing up against what is wrong not across the ocean or at the White House, but right where they live, where they work. Scared yet? You should be, we've been talking, you and I, for years and thats just what the assholes want: more and more talk. Well I'm done talking. I feel more pride taking on the petty tyrants in my own small sphere now then I do bitching about the indecencies of the Bush administration or the hypocrisies of his successor. And unlike the old ego boosting bologna my actions now really do change the world.

There's no nice way to change the world. The world is a steaming pile of shit, so its best to just to be honest with yourself about the smell if you're going to dive in hands first. It won't be easy if you turn away from the cult of optimism, if you start calling things as they are, if you start stripping off the carefully designed window glossing. People will hate you, very nice people will hate you. You're threatening not just their ethical philosophy but their smug complacency. Millions of egos ride high on the assumption that its better to look the other way and avoid 'conflict'. But you know as I do that their morality is one born out of words alone, true to the epithet 'liberal' that so many bear. This morality hasn't made a better world, its only swept the evil under the rug as it was meant to. You want to serve the good -- there is no good without guts.

To the unconvinced, if you are a optimist, best just cover your ears when I'm around. Otherwise your pretty little world might get all stained with truth. If you are an abuser then watch out, next time you slap your kid in Walmart, that guy at the checkout counter might not be just another 'eyes to the floor' citizen, he might be me or someone else who knows there is evil in the world, but only within arm's reach...