10,068. RUDIMENTS, pt. 108

RUDIMENTS, pt. 108

Making Cars

I've always loved 'push-back.' As

an adult, giving it right back to all

those local political types who try

running local town and village

management. Most of the time, I

could argue any side to any situation,

even with having my own, quite rigid

formulation. So, I often still do that.

I like to take issue with an issue, and

just pound. Remember me as a failed

political football, and you'll see that

I have nothing to lose. The discomfort

and half-public embarrassment that I

had to endure has inured me to being

sensitive. So I like to speak out. They're

no match for me at all, except that they

hold reins of power, in a sense, that I do

not. In any case, in the science of Reality
what matter is that? Reality has to be about
understanding. Politics is nothing of that
at all. The pen being mightier than the

sword  -  at least in the old sense of

that saying  -  there's nothing I like more

than to burst the fake-thought bubble of

some swanky low-level political hack

speaking to locals, dispensing baloney

sandwiches and ice cream for free, as they

lap up every false and insincere word

that's said to them. Right here where I

live, we have tons of that, and I do love

the occasional pounce. President Harry

S Truman (did you know that the 'S'

meant nothing at all and he just added

it there, and without any punctuation too

because he and his Missouri, Pendergast

machine politicians thought it made him

more 'Presidential?), was a haberdasher.

Someone who sold shirts, let's say. Like

any of Avenel's or anywhere's local

political diggers, he started small, with

this and that local position, then county

position, until being picked up by the

mighty, and corrupt, Pendergast machine.

They ruled Missouri, and they mostly

hand-picked those candidates they

wanted. Which they did for Harry, who

was always considered a bit of a dolt.

They kept kicking him upstairs, running

him for this and for that, again. Once in

Washington, doing the machine's bidding

all the while, incredibly a deadlocked

convention traded things away until

they were left with the deal that put

Harry S Truman up as FDR's 4th term

Vice President! Way over his head in

this position, the hope was he'd stay

invisible and play the rules. Incredibly,

FDR dies, in April 1945, I think it was,

and Truman becomes President. Amidst

a hundred life-and-death questions  - 

ending a war, saving survivors, rounding

up Nazis, rebuilding Europe, dealing

with Stalin, and more. And then! Atomic

bomb decision time. As VP, old Harry

didn't even know that project existed.

Then in quick enough time he gets

to become the one and only guy to

drop, not one, but two!

-

Sometime in the 1970's, I think, 

there was a book published entitled 

'The Peter Principle.' I really don't 

recall the author, and anyone can 

look it up; I'm not in the mood to,

and I don't wish this to be a research

paper. What I'm saying is that the

idea there was a good parallel to this 

Truman thing. It had to do with the

notion that a person will advance

as far as his or her incompetence 

allows them to advance. In Truman's

case, the accidental (and then re-elected)

Presidency. Such a person keeps getting,

or can continue getting, pushed upstairs

until their ineffectiveness becomes glaringly

apparent and then that progress stops and

there they remain, at whatever level they've

gotten to (I won't say 'achieved', because

that then refutes the premise). The idea of

this idea, the 'Peter' part of it, had to do

with Jesus and his first prime apostle,

Peter, the 'rock' upon whom that 'church'

was founded, if you follow scriptures.

Peter, according to this, somehow 'made

it to the top' and stayed there, by glint of

his steady, plodding, nothingness. To do

the orders, as needed. I suppose it's a bit

like Hannah Arendt's 'Banality of Evil,'

idea of dolts and everyday Joe's just

following orders, doing their 'duty' and

exterminating people as a routine part of

their everyday job. 

-

I have no doubt, at these low-ball jock-strap

levels of local politics, that if they were, in 

turn told, to wipe out people who didn't

trim their lawns, or properly maintain and

paint their houses, etc., they'd just go ahead

and routinely follow the dictates of doing what

they're told. To advance their own crazy

circuitry. Here in Avenel, say, we'd have

monkey teams, with ease, nailing people to

the cross-members of telephone poles for

those infractions, and for dirty cars probably

too. The reason for all those, as I began stating,

is that no one ever pushes back. People are

sheep. To them the idea of pushing back is

dress good and smell nice and go to the 

polling station and make your silly 

one-vote for (you know who) and then

go home. Truly, that's the opposite of

what's needed, and I've always thought

that and felt that. The problem for me now

is, I'm too old to give a hoot, I realize they're

all idiots, everywhere, and I just like to be

a boil on someone's ass somewhere, a burr

on their saddle; just something to annoy.

-

That's been my life : a sort of hit and run

tactic of evasive participatory, fire-burning

inner revolution. You can keep the outside.

It 'ain't worth nothing.'