an open letter to newpaltzjournal.com
My GOD man, open up your blog to comments! I’m thinking of starting a blog just to discuss/refute/laugh at your ridiculousness—as well as, very very occasionally, applaud. Damn right wingers, they never believe in democracy, do they? I mean, why spew all this stuff out and refuse to engage others in a discussion about it?
LET’S TALK.
ENDLESSLY. I’ll even promise not to comment on your insane anti-choice posts, OK? That has to be worth something.
Every time I take a hesitant peek, I work myself into a froth, nay a lather, nay—a seething, surging, spume-y squall of a froth, and it’s getting tiring not having a froth outlet, if you will. I have so much to say, about Ayn Rand*, about casual racism masquerading as….uh, I don’t know…intelligence, I guess, hypocrisy, quotation mark usage, and so much more—and that’s all from the past week!
Then again…who cares? Are we ever going to change each other’s minds? Shouldn’t I really be using my time in better ways, like masturbating or something? But the impulse to express outrage is so strong, and the hopeful thought that I could express my outrage in a thoughtful, nuanced way that might actually contribute to meaningful dialogue is stronger still.
Yuck. Why can’t everyone just agree with me?
*Just the teeniest bit about that: everyone always says Rand defended and celebrated “wealth creators” to such an extent that her entire Objectivist philosophy has seemingly been reduced to “yay for money!” While it most certainly was that (she did write a book called “Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal,” after all) to a certain extent, what I took away from Rand was a very anarchic sort of freedom: freedom to live our lives as we desire. I know that she might not be happy that what I took from her books is that I have the freedom to live my life however the fuck I please and for me that often means the freedom not to earn money, but who cares? That’s what I took from it.
I loathe everything she ever wrote about laissez-faire capitalism (I could expound on that too, all about how humans are currently too stupid to practice capitalism well [and, for that matter, anarchism, which explains why I am a Green, see?], but I love her deeper thoughts on how a life can be structured. A part of my heart—a bigger part than I’d like to admit—loves that rapist Howard Roark, OK? There, I said it. Reading Rand in high school gave me freedom from the horrible hippie household of my childhood without turning me into an equally horrible corporatist Republican (or, ugh, libertarian), because for me she wasn’t about this or that economic theory, she was about personal freedom.
Personal freedom! That phrase has been stolen by the Right, and we need to take it back. The Left is the party of personal freedom: freedom to marry whoever you want, freedom to be in a union or not, freedom to not shave your legs without fearing societal ridicule, just freedom. I always hated that stupid line “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” I mean, I likes me some Joplin, of course, but she wasn’t exactly the smartest you-know-what in the you-know-what, and it’s time for the Left to admit it: freedom is the most important American value.
I love all the stupid freedoms that we no longer have, the teeny things that make me remember why I’m an anarchist: freedom to get drunk on the street, freedom to not wear a shirt if you don’t want to. And of course, the big ones: freedom from fear of Big Brother, freedom from being forced to work (and here’s the old Roark coming back: my god those layabouts on the stoop in New Paltz make my blood boil. They say they are anarchists, but they do nothing! They are nihilists! I should be happy they are enjoying their freedom to do nothing but be high on the street at 1 PM on a Tuesday and bang on their fucking faux djembes, but I kind of can’t stand them and their damn unspayed and unneutered dogs make me so angry I could just—phew. Stopping the rant-within-a-rant!).
Just plain old American freedom, OK? I’m on the far left because I know that freedom isn’t free. And that doesn’t have anything to do with 9/11, you redneck freaks. It has everything to do with capitalism, and the way it has to, by definition, control and limit us.
One Response to “an open letter to newpaltzjournal.com”
nice.