The Revolution-Now Thread (Russell B. & others).

[Handsome B. Wonderful]

I also think there are limitations to celebrity culture and that those who resonate with his ideas must make them their own.

I agree.

[Wombaticus Rex]

As I think was mentioned previously, it all depends on what you mean by "leader"- and leadership to me, is not per se bad...

Appreciate the clarification!

Despite the often orthogonal angles of our respective trains of thought, we can still arrive on the same page.

[American Dream]

As I think was mentioned previously, it all depends on what you mean by "leader"- and leadership to me, is not per se bad...

Appreciate the clarification!

Despite the often orthogonal angles of our respective trains of thought, we can still arrive on the same page.

Yeah- I'm pretty supportive of Brand- see this as an opportunity for all of us to take things farther...

[JackRiddler]

I see what you mean now about Valentine.

Such a sorry little trifle. Hate to say it, but when targeted obviously at the person and not anything he said, it's jealousy, isn't it. Damn it, why am I not as young and good-looking and getting to perform excellent material for live audiences and having the fun times and the loving adoration that Brand has?

[MacCruiskeen]

I see what you mean now about Valentine.

Such a sorry little trifle. Hate to say it, but when targeted obviously at the person and not anything he said, it's jealousy, isn't it. Damn it, why am I not as young and good-looking and getting to perform excellent material for live audiences and having the fun times and the loving adoration that Brand has?

That's. it. precisely.


(AD wants more discussion and analysis. Wilhelm Reich discussed and analysed it in exhaustive detail 80 years ago, and look where it got him.)

[Wombaticus Rex]

To his credit, I see Valentine as someone who paid his dues and then some. That's not an excuse, of course: plenty of other folks survive and thrive through worse. To wit, though: my impression is that he got very badly burned out by his extensive and first-hand work covering one of the original Dirty Wars, the Operation Condor slaughterhouse. His history of the DEA is also fucking superb! In the end, though, clearly just a bitter poodle -- but to mine eyes, understandably so.

Hopefully he eats some acid this Halloween, eh?

Edit To include a link and pic...



...and to chuckle about my comment in juxtaposition with Mac's -- I was analyzing a man I've never so much as met, and apologize in retrospect, more to myself than anyone else. Bad Wombat.

[MacCruiskeen]

...and to chuckle about my comment in juxtaposition with Mac's -- I was analyzing a man I've never so much as met, and apologize in retrospect, more to myself than anyone else. Bad Wombat.

Don't know what you're referring to, WR.

You share those initials with one of my heroes, btw. Yes heroes, goddammit.

I am very tired. Contending like St Francis himself with utterly arseholish behaviour from sneaky clerks and their petty underlings and absurdly vain pseudoartists, in meatworld and virtualworld simultaneously. I need a vacation, as even an unfeeling android once said.

Hopefully he eats some acid this Halloween, eh?

Ha. I swore off all drugs hard and soft just over twenty years ago when my kid was born. I even swore off all alcoholic beverages just over a year ago and have been congratulating myself ever since on my general fitness and newfound serenity & equilibrium.

Got any Salvia?

I want to have another baby, this time with Russell Brand. Perhaps the research boffins at Cambridge Unileversty are making fast progress in that field too. The BBC will report.

[MacCruiskeen]

Apropos truth, beauty and me: Here's a quote from memory, probably inexact, from somewhere in Morrissey's spanking new 450-page Autobiography:

No one will deny that I have suffered more than any human being who ever lived.

I read it & thought: You bastard, you've stolen my line.

[smiths]

Ha, you've suffered? You were lucky.

We lived for three months in a paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six in the morning, clean the paper bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down t' mill, fourteen hours a day, week-in week-out, for sixpence a week, and when we got home our Dad would thrash us to sleep wi' his belt.

Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at six o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of 'ot gravel, work twenty hour day at mill for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would thrash us to sleep with a broken bottle, if we were lucky!

Well, of course, we had it tough. We used to 'ave to get up out of shoebox at twelve o'clock at night and lick road clean wit' tongue. We had two bits of cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at mill for sixpence every four years, and when we got home our Dad would slice us in two wit' bread knife.

Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah.

And you try and tell the young people of today that ..... they won't believe you.

They won't!

[MacCruiskeen]

ah, smiths, take a seat. [adjusts slightly soiled spectacles] So... Just what qualifies you to speak, write, or even exist at all, smiths? Hmmm? [strokes chin, consults notes] I see that you, like the er actor Mister Brand, have not even bothered to work out a dependable ironclad plan for an instant future utopia. [shakes head sadly] Do so by tomorrow morning at nine, and one might perhaps begin to take you very slightly seriously.

[sighs longsufferingly]

It can't all be fun and games, you know. Socialism wasn't built in a day, my boy. [Coughs hackingly, vanishes under a collapsing pile of books] Now please leave my office if you would, my secretary will see you out. [In a muffled voice] I have to do some real work on my critical theory.

[Exit smiths. A cloud of dust-motes still rises from behind the desk.]

[JackRiddler]

smiths: thank you! I was just thinking today where would I find just that Monty Python piece again? No disappointments - it's got me laughing still.

[Sounder]

Steller, thanks Mac

Mac wrote...

This is such cant, such dismal driveling piffle. He no more "objectifies" "beautiful women" by noticing that they are beautiful and even saying it, than he "objectifies" tall men by noticing their tallness and even calling them tall, or "objectifies" likable people by noticing their likableness and calling them likable, or "objectifies" greedy bosses by noticing their greed and even calling them greedy.

RB, like everyone else, is a subject. Everyone else whom RB, or anyone else, encounters, is of course also a subject, but only to him- or herself. To RB and to everyone else (whatever their gender), all of these self-subjects are objects -- necessarily. This is a trivial truth determined by the nature of (normal) human consciousness itself: it can only manifest itself in one soul in one place at one time. What can possibly bridge that gap? Sympathy. Empathy. Friendship. Love. Desire.

But we're close to the heart of it now, close to the heart of all this carping and sniping and grumbling. What all of these gollums on the "radical" [sic] "left" [sic] cannot stand about Russell Brand is his beauty, and his ability to perceive and evoke and take delight in beauty elsewhere, including in other human beings. And I am not just talking about looks.

The gollums have this much in common with their pseudo-antagonists on the right: they have found Russell Brand guilty of being alive. I wonder what his sentence will be. It'll have to fit the crime.

Dead eyed people are bound to be jealous of those that show sparkle and life in their eyes.

The dead eye people are the machine men, with no respect for the divine because to them, it does not exist..

[JackRiddler]

The Salon and Counterpunch piffles are particularly conservative in the sense of devotion to the status quo, which in both cases is dressed up as critique of the celebrity culture and of the left's supposed susceptibility to it. Thanks to the celebrity industry, Brand has more of a platform than either of these bitter writers. (I understand their bitterness.) He didn't invent the celebrity industry. But he does something good with it, and does so at moderate risk to his career. He could choose to do absolutely nothing with it, and care only about his career, which is what 99% of celebrities and 97% of Salon writers already do. Would these writers like Brand to silence himself? Would they have been happier if he'd merely promoted his tour? Unfortunately that's obvious, although they'd have been forced to manufacture some other, unrelated bullshit for their latest columns.

Many people are happy to see Brand make use of his opportunities. We also love the humor, the eloquence and the uncompromising style with which he dismantles the totems and strawmen thrown at him by the media mannequins like Paxton and MSNBC's morning crew. No one therefore worships him. No one thinks he's invented the things he says - least of all him! No one thinks he's a leader just for doing this. These are all red herrings from people who apparently feel their territory as know-it-alls for the left has been violated. They reach for the grab-bag to pull out whatever cheap shots might cut this interloper down. Sad for them.

[Luther Blissett]

During the revolution, will I be able to keep my job, apartment, and ability to feed myself whilst participating?

[MacCruiskeen]

During the revolution, will I be able to keep my job, apartment, and ability to feed myself whilst participating?

If it's a proper revolution, Luther, then you will be able to do all those things, and more, with more ease and with more pleasure than you can do them now. Yes, even during that revolution. For any real revolution will mean release rather than constriction, and people will help each other.

"Revolution": now there's yet another word that's been sullied and distorted in Establishment discourse. We have all been conditioned to associate it with Terror & insecurity & lawlessness & lovelessness & disinformation & mutual distrust & wilful ugliness & waste, and blaring propaganda & dismal lies & people languishing in jails without trial, and despoilment of the past & hatred of beauty & casual cruelty against the helpless, and 24/7 surveillance, & pompous greedy bosses & corrupt entrenched nomenklatura & petty careerist timeservers wilfully impoverishing the populace and stealing our children's future, while the coterie at the top inhabits vulgar palaces and builds grotesque useless monuments to its own power and magnificence.

- On second thoughts, we'd better not risk it, cos look what we've got now.