Monday, September 24, 2018

Looking Left to Panarchy

I haven't always been an anarchist but I've always been a radical. After being raised in the pro-life movement I discovered the Communist Manifesto as a 14 year old lapsed malcontent. I didn't understand every word of it but the inflammatory anti-clerical rhetoric lit a fire in me that never went out. After spending several years as a teenage anarchist, influenced in equal measure by Subcomandante Marcos and Johnny Rotten, I turned to state socialism, inspired by the bold anti-imperialist antics of Hugo Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution. It was also around this time that I became enamored by tales of the Bolsheviks, Che Guevara, and those dastardly Castro brothers. Marxist-Leninism and Democratic Centralism made sense to a twenty-something closeted agoraphobic. Like my life it felt preserved in formaldehyde. It felt safe.

But there's nothing radical about safe and when I came out of the closet to take my life back from mental illness and gender tyranny, I was ready to dream dangerously again. The suspiciously early demise of Hugo Chavez followed shortly by the cataclysmic failure of his signature revolution was the final straw. Chavez did everything right but when he dropped dead the revolution dropped dead with him. For me, that was the last nail in the coffin for state socialism or state anything for that matter. I was drawn back to anarchism by the unexpected triumph of the Rojava Revolution in Northern Syria and the prison writings of the man who inspired it, another post-Marxist anti-statist named Abdullah Ocalan. But I've remained both conscious and unapologetic of my tangled radical roots and my objectives have always remained the same, the creation of a classless post-capitalist society.

There's another word for this; utopia, and its acquired a bad reputation by being bandied about by thugs and idiots. But utopia needn't be a pejorative just because a few bloodthirsty Maoists mucked it up. When it all comes down to it, utopia is a goal. It's something to strive towards eternally like a form of societal evolution. The only problem with utopia is that it's a subjective premise. One person's utopia is another person's DMV. Expecting a Bible-thumping paleocon to ever be on board with my queer commie vision of direct democracy is about as reasonable as expecting a bomb throwing queen like me to thrive in a theistic monastery. As much as I may believe that my way is the way, enforcing that belief upon anybody would mean the death of liberty and the revolution for which it stands. At the same time, the earth melting apocalypse that is the American Empire doesn't exactly leave us with a wealth of time to debate the fine points of stateless utopianism. My solution to this existential conundrum is embracing the philosophy of panarchy.

The basic concept of panarchy is that governments should be more like churches only with better benefits and less child rape, voluntary stateless communities that people can pick and choose to be a party to and can coexist within the same geographic spaces. This means that my Bookchinite municipality of pot-farming trannies can thrive on the same block as a distributionist Catholic polity or an anarcho-capitalist confederation. As long as all communities agree to a policy of strict non-aggression and cooperation enforced by a coalition of civilian militias the result will be a virtual marketplace of optional utopias. Those that succeed will grow in a decentralized fashion while those that fail will splinter into smaller communities to accommodate every possible lifestyle and way of life. The best part is that a violent upheaval may not even be necessary to achieve this. We can create these communities now as the American dream rots like a two week old jack-o-lantern. Some of us have already started.

My neighbors, the Amish, have thrived peacefully as an essentially panarchist society for well over a century and they've done it without firing a single bullet. They've simply chosen to opt out of mainstream society while simultaneously and peacefully coexisting with us wicked folks in the English world. Against all the odds they have persevered as a radical traditionalist, racially pluralist, theocratic aristocracy with virtually no classes, no private property, and no goddamn electricity. Their way of life seems completely insane to 90% of the planet and yet they continue to exist essentially unchanged even as the world burns down around their farms because they embrace the concept of a fully voluntary society where all transactions are completely consensual. When the Amish disagree they don't war, they atomize, separating into smaller autonomous communities. Even their children are given the opportunity to experience the English world and chose for themselves whether they wish to join them. Some do, but many don't. Many choose community over modernity. And isn't that what all anarchists are truly thirsty for? An escape from the corrosive cult of bigness and a return to the bosom of the tribe, however we may define it?

The Amish way is not my way. I could and would never live that way. But goddammit if I don't respect the shit out of their devotion to peaceful autonomy. And if they can do it their way then why can't the rest of us do it ours? Why not syndicalists and mutualists and communists and traditionalists and libertines? Why should we all be at each others throats when we all essentially want the same damn thing? To strive for our individual utopias and be left the fuck alone. So give me your radical faeries, militiamen, and black nationalists. Give me your outlaw bikers, gang-bangers, and cyber-terrorists. Give me your Orthodox Old Believers, born again pagans, and Sufi mystics. Give me your gutter punks, skinheads, and black metal church arsonists. Give me all the freaks you got so we can come together to burn this motherfucker we call a state down, once and for all.

And to my appalled fellow leftists who are disgusted by the very notion of breaking bread with any of the above, I say take a cue from the Amish and lighten the fuck up. It's called solidarity, dearest motherfuckers. Freaks of the world unite!



Peace, Love, & Solidarity- CH



Soundtrack; songs that influenced this post

* I Was a Teenage Anarchist by Against Me!
* Cherry-Coloured Funk by Cocteau Twins
* Pretty Vacant by the Sex Pistols
* That's When I Reach For My Revolver by Mission of Burma
* We're Not Done (End Title) by Mogwai
* Tribe by Gruntruck
* The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
* Shake Appeal by the Stooges
* Freak Scene by Dinosaur Jr.
* My Way by Sid Vicious

Monday, September 17, 2018

The Establishment Hates a Sloppy Imperialist

Regardless of how you feel about the son of a bitch (or his apparently abortion-shy bitch mother), it's becoming pretty hard to ignore the fact that the establishment, personified by both major parties, the legacy media, and the so called intelligence community, fucking hates President Donald J. Trump. With the New York Times latest revelation of an inter-administration resistance and Bob Woodword's latest tabloid airport flyswatter, the movement to remove or contain our red-headed stepchild of an Electoral College despot has never been more vibrant. This puts me in a pretty weird position, not just because I've devoted my life to bitch slapping bigots like the Donald and upsetting the fanged mandarins of the establishment who so oppose him but because I find it strange that these fellow swamp critters despise each other so damn much.

Some of this is obviously theater. Donald Trump ran a successful campaign largely on trashing the Fourth Estate that Middle-America has come to despise for their impressive track record of fooling them into unwinnable wars and shitty trade deals. And the Fourth Estate made this campaign possible with their round the clock coverage of the free-wheeling MAGA circus. Every time the press attacks Trump he gets to play the role of the anti-establishment victim that his fans identify with. And every time Trump makes some vaguely fascist empty threat against the mass media they get to play the role of the embattled crusaders for truth. In both cases, Trump sees his approval numbers go up and the press sees their ratings go up with them. It's a mutually abusive, codependent relationship straight out of a Dr. Phil rerun.

But this still doesn't fully explain the devotion that the mainstream political elite have to actually physically removing the Ginger Duce from power. In spite of all his Buchananite Isolationist rhetoric, Trump is still essentially one of them, isn't he? Born into money, the Donald made his mint off the kind of corporate welfare that fuels the sickening lifestyles of this countries vaunted rapacious oligarchy. He threw cash around to all the right monsters, bankrolling a rogues gallery of Rockefeller Republicans and their Clintonian cousins (including the Clinton's themselves). And his presidency largely reflects this grotesque legacy. The Donald loves all the horrid filth his establishment enemies love, unwinnable wars, Wall Street giveaways, minority strangling police states, all that good shit. Contrary to all Trump's America First bullshitting, he's essentially just another imperialist swine in a ten thousand dollar suit.

So why do the heroic imperialists in the "Steady State" despise their fellow pigfucker so damn much? My theory, if I could distill it down to a single sentence; Donald Trump sucks at imperialism. If there is one thing the establishment has come to hate more than the dreadful Isolationist ("No! Not peace!") it's a sloppy imperialist. With all his buffoonish bluster and irrational hissy-fits, Donald Trump makes the American Empire look bad. If you read the screeds of the NYT's Anonymous and Bernstein's bottom bitch close enough, you'll find that the biggest complaint Trump's fellow charlatans have is that he makes America look weak again in front of the geopolitical competition.

Where as past presidents have eliminated our pesky problem of freedom seeking refugees discreetly, Trump turns our cruel immigration system into a spectacle of barbarism befitting a Pasolini picture. Where as past presidents have framed our imperial NATO protection racket in Europe as some kind of globalist Kumbaya love fest, Trump shows up like his cigar-chomping slumlord father and barks "Where's the fucking rent?". Where as past warmongers waxed philosophic about humanitarian intervention and the right to protect, Trump rants and raves about blowing the shit out of people and stealing their oil. The sick fact is that Trump isn't doing anything that Obama, Clinton, or Reagan wouldn't do, he's just moronically laying bare the harsh reality of the American way without any of that razzle-dazzle showmanship that we've come to expect from our career politicians. And the other big boys on the block are taking notice.

It was the Donald's Sam Kinison style fire breathing that convinced South Korea to elect Moon Jae-in, a refreshingly rational pacifist who took the initiative with China's help to start a peace dialogue with the North before Trump decided to switch gears and take credit for it as if he planned the mess all along. Even as Trump does his damnedest to sabotage the deal from within, peace on the peninsula rolls on unabated. America is on the verge of losing South Korea to the influence of their more coherent neighbors and Iraq and Syria aren't far behind. This may not be a fix for America's bloody War on Terror but god help me if I can't see this as a move in the right direction. This is what the Steady State fears, the death of American prestige. The rest of the world welcomes it with open arms.

The hysterics on the right wan't to view Trump's war with the establishment as the scourge of a creeping deep state and the hysterics on the left wan't to look at it as an Orwellian battle for democracy. They both may be right in their own myopic way but this anarchist prefers to look at it as imperialist on imperialist violence, and god knows the only good imperialist is an irrelevant one. In spite of the short term gains on the home front, both Trump and the Grey Lady are well on their way out. I say good fucking riddance.

Hand me the remote, dearest motherfuckers, let's see what else is on.



Peace, Love, & Empathy- CH



Soundtrack; Songs that influenced this post

* T.V. Eye by the Stooges
* Middle Sea by Yuck
* Surrender by Cheap Trick
* Mr. Brightside by the Killers
* T.V. Party by Black Flag
* Cherub Rock by Smashing Pumpkins
* Son of a Gun by the Vaselines
* The Wagon by Dinosaur Jr.

Monday, September 10, 2018

A Politically Incorrect Guide To Not Being a Dick

Political correctness is a fucking bust. It may have started with the best of intentions but so was the Russian Revolution and both ended in bourgeois tyranny. Political correctness has been more or less the law of the zeitgeist since the early Eighties when the radical feminists teamed up with the puritanical Reaganites to poop the raucous party of the Seventies, after the CIA unleashed AIDS to kill all the fun faggots (I'm only half-kidding). And in the proceeding decades the PC revolution has achieved absolutely nothing. Black and brown people are still poor as dirt. Women and femmes are still roundly violated on a daily basis. And the prison state has never been stronger.

The only thing political correctness really achieved was making it easier for bigots to hide behind the facade of good manners. Based on policy alone, the Clintonian Democrats clearly despise brown and queer people as much as those knuckle-draggers in the alt-right, they just know how to cover their ass with careful newspeak like "super-predators" and empty gestures to people who disgusted them three weeks ago when they weren't politically viable. Personally, I'll take an open bigot like David Duke over some squishy closet-basher like Alec Baldwin any day of the week. At least that silicone supremacist will call me faggot to my face.

So the current backlash against the malign influence of political correctness is not only totally natural, it's also totally necessary. But that doesn't mean you have to be a fucking dick. The reality is that marginalized individuals such as myself do have plenty of reasons to be pissed off and straight white cis-folk could strongly benefit from learning why and realizing that their mainstream cache does afford them some privileges that the rest of us don't have. I'm willing to bet that most of you can enter a public restroom without having to seriously consider the possibility that somebody might set you on fire for having the wrong genitalia. But nothing gets solved without conversation, so I've decided to put together a few suggestions on how to be politically incorrect without being a total dick.


#1.  Assume Nothing-  I've got a bumper sticker that reads that and it's good advice for everyone to follow. The biggest problem with race and gender relations today is that everybody already has everybody else figured out and they're all usually wrong. This can be easily ameliorated by quite simply assuming nothing about anybody until they tell you otherwise. Not every woman has a cunt. Not every inner-city black man is a gang banger. And not every redneck is a cousin-fucking racist. I'm a genderqueer dyke but I'm also a foul-mouthed, pro-life, anti-imperialist who cares much more about Yemeni genocide than bathroom rights, though I would appreciate not being lit on fire. People are more complex than black, white, gay, straight, cis, trans. Just stay open to infinite possibilities and get ready to be surprised.

#2.  Ask Questions-  If you don't know something, just fucking ask. Some people will get offended but most people will appreciate the effort. Ask a black person why they smoke menthols. Ask a gay person how they decide who rides on top. Ask a trans person why they pee sitting down (I don't, those seats are fucking heinous). Don't expect everyone to be comfortable with giving you an answer. Don't expect one person to speak for an entire population. But by all means, don't be afraid to fucking ask. Bigotry loves ignorance and the silence political correctness spreads ignorance.

#3.  Words Matter Less Than Context-  Patti Smith once sang, "Jesus Christ was a n*gger, Mahatma Gandhi and my mother too. We're ALL fucking n*ggers!" For those of you who don't know (and shame on you), Patti's a white bitch and she's far from a bigot. Her statement was one of solidarity from one oppressed person to another. It's the same reason I make regular use of words like faggot, tranny, dyke, and queer, just to name a few. To me these are terms of endearment, of love for my people. And if some hetero-cis-boy tells me, "You know, for a tranny, you're alright", I'm gonna respond, "Well thank you. For a breeder, you aren't half bad either". That doesn't mean your lilly-white ass should waltz into the nearest bodega and shout, "What up, my niggas!", there is nothing genuine about that kind of imitation which is why you'd probably get your ass kicked in. There are no bad words, just bad (or dumb) intentions. The most hurtful thing anyone ever told me was to "just be normal". The Catholic Church did a knock-out job of teaching me how to hate myself and they didn't have to call me faggot to do it.

#4.  Empathy Is Everything-  The biggest problem with the world today is that so many people seem almost medically incapable of putting themselves in other people's shoes and this cuts both ways. Suburban liberals don't ask themselves why someone would vote for Trump in a post-apocalyptic Rust-Belt town. Traditional conservatives don't ask themselves what it must be like to be a stranger in your own body. And Americans don't ask themselves what they would do if they came home to find their family on the business end of a Tomahawk missile. We need to remember that we're all just people, regardless of our tribe. You don't have to agree with someone or even like them to respect their right to live their life however they damn well choose.


Political correctness may be a bust, dearest motherfuckers, but human kindness is always a boon. Take it from a white-trash-tranny-n*gger like me, you don't have to be politically correct to not be a dick. You just have to give a fuck. Give it a shot, dearest motherfuckers, your honky-breeder ass might just like it.



Peace, Love, & Empathy- CH



Soundtrack; Songs that influenced this post

* Voices Carry by Sky Ferreira
* Rock & Roll N*gger by Patty Smith
* Express Yourself by N.W.A.
* Mamma Tried by Merle Haggard
* White Minority by Black Flag
* The Day the Niggaz Took Over by Dr. Dre
* You're No Rock & Roll Fun by Sleater-Kinney
* A Boy Named Sue by Johnny Cash

Monday, September 3, 2018

Who's Afraid of Comrade Hermit?

Its recently been brought to my attention by a well respected member of the libertarian literati that my writing more or less sucks. I wont name any names, god knows I've burned enough fucking bridges, but suffice it to say you would know who he is if I did. This isn't a new complaint. I've heard it before but the certain terms of his criticism and the fact that I actually respect the son of a bitch made its way through my armor like a spear. Unfortunately for him, the only way I know how to cope with such turmoil is through my bad writing.

His gripe was a tired old sawhorse often tossed about by white cis-gender libertarians. What it basically amounts to is that he's uncomfortable with my "personal" style of narrative. He's revolted by all the I, I, I's. I this, I that, I hate war, I have feelings, and I share them with my work, and apparently I shouldn't fucking do this. Fair enough. My writing is personal. I'm a personal person. Things like war and the state effect me deeply so I express those feelings honestly through my prose. Apparently this along with my penchant for profanity makes my work unpublishable by the big shots of libertarian online journalism. Apparently my work is too unconventional to meet their sterling standards of literary integrity.

Well fuck them. Apparently those cunty know-it-alls have never heard of New Journalism. If it was up to these self-appointed Mandarins of the fifth estate Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Wolfe, and Matt Taibbi would have never been published. Apparently they skipped class the day their staunchy universities taught about Gonzo Journalism. The basic message that I've gotten from these people is that I'm too different. And they call themselves libertarians?

I'll never understand this, alleged radicals who devote themselves to political liberty somehow justify artistic tyranny? The peace loving ex-hippies who evolved from sticking daisies in the barrels of rifles to editing major alternative news sources want everyone to fucking write the same. There is no room for forms of expression that deviate from the company line of stale, detached, masculine, editorial order.

Who the hell do these people think they are? You're all for pot, pussy, and peace but my deadly I, I, I's are a bridge too far into chaos? You're crusaders for free speech but  you uphold the grey flannel rule of the seven deadly words? And you have the fucking gall to look down your crooked little noses at real fucking radicals like my friends Tom Knapp and Keith Preston for not being capital L libertarians and publishing degenerates like me? This is what's become of the fifth estate? A bitchy little clique of elitist brats getting high off their own flatulence? To quote television's finest egoist, Rick Sanchez, "You wanted to be safe from the government so you became a stupid government!"

To me the avante garde and radical politics of any kind have always gone together like sadism and masochism. Embracing one but rejecting the other isn't just heresy, it's just plain fucking boring. Somewhere along the line these guardians of the digital underground became a petite version of the conformist legacy media that they mock. Somewhere along the line they began to take themselves too goddamn seriously. They lost their sense of humor and they lost touch with what the free press really means.

I strongly suggest they look to the message boards beneath their carefully structured articles for a reminder. These places are hives for true liberty, where all manor of libertarians, anarchists, stoners, Stalinists, truthers, trannies, third positionists, cryptos, and perverts come together to break bread and bust balls. There are better writers in these cyber trenches than the people who get published above them. That is what real democracy, both political and artistic, fucking looks like. Take fucking notice.

These dearest motherfuckers on the fringe of the fringe are my people. They've made me a better writer than any chickenshit, role crazy, editor ever has. I just wanted to cross that editorial line one time and be the first freak on the board to see my name in the big print. I wanted it for me and I wanted it for them. But if I have to bite off half my tongue to get there then it's not worth it. I won't become like them, the other them, I'm better than that. I'll take authentic obscurity over establishment validation any day of the fucking week and you can etch that on my gravestone.

I asked that glorified desk chair hall monitor what he was so damn afraid of. He responded that he was afraid of publishing bad writing. That hurt, but it shouldn't. Coming from a sell-out like him, that's a goddamn compliment. I said a lot of things in response to his unwarranted low-blow, a lot of angry vitriolic things that I probably should have kept to myself. But here's what I should have told him; You're goddamn right I'm a bad writer. I'm the baddest motherfucking writer you'll ever snub. And you should be afraid. You should be very afraid. Those who fight mainstream scum all to often take their place, which will damn you to the same fate of utter irrelevancy. Let my bad journalism be a reminder that your "good" journalism is a one way ticket to circling the drain. Say hi to Dan Rather when you get there, you chickenshit conformist.

...And to you few proud dearest motherfuckers that read this post, all I can do is sincerely thank you. You have given me the only gift a starving artist truly desires, an audience. For this I can only wish you these three little words...



Peace, Love, & Empathy- CH



Soundtrack; Songs that influenced this post

* Take This Job and Shove It by Johnny Paycheck
* Where Eagles Dare by the Misfits
* So What by Ministry
* I Think That I Would Die by Hole
* I Walk the Line by Johnny Cash
* I Bet On Losing Dogs by Mitski
* Chickenshit Conformist by Dead Kennedys
* Everybody Does by Julien Baker
* My War by Black Flag
* My Way by Sid Vicious