When the Political Becomes Personal: an Epiphany

WHEN DISASTER STRIKES, I instinctively think of myself as being utterly and irremediably alone. I view myself as not just on my own in the context of the immediate crisis – as rising or falling solely on the basis of my own (severely limited) resources, but also as being cast off, banished, abandoned, alone in such a profound and absolute sense, I dare not ask for help lest it trigger my immediate, emphatic and quite possibly violent rejection as an unwanted burden. I remember encountering, about the time I was nine years old, the concept of being marooned – that is, transported to some desolately uninhabited isle in a dangerously tropical latitude and left there to live or die however fate might decree – a circumstance the emotional and material horrors of which I instantly understood and with which I fully emphasized, seemingly with every cell in my body. Such was the character of my childhood, a span of years the chief lesson of which was that any admission of neediness invariably invited retribution, the greater the need, the more severe the reprisal. I was, to put it bluntly, a thoroughly despised child – the legacy of which (as the events of the past week made clear) – I had not fully transcended even at age 74.

Even at the best of times, my relationship with computers is defined by an undertow of extreme anxiety. Not only is the computer the prime exemplar of invasive alien technology – an artifact of the morally imbecilic Otherworld of capitalism, where infinite greed is ultimate virtue and the tyranny of the One Percent over all the rest of us is reckoned a divinely ordained right – it is also the electronic scab that destroyed the realm of print journalism, which in the pre-computer era I assumed would always be my professional home. The computer abolished six of every seven newspaper jobs – copy editor, typographer, photo-engraver, compositor, proof-reader and stereotyper – and it piled all their duties on the reporters, reducing us all to miserably overworked, wretchedly underpaid clerks whose sole function is to fill the spaces between the advertisements with whatever drivel comes most readily to hand. Worse, the computer also permanently disempowered us; its downsizing of the workforce destroyed our unions, without which we are no better off, in terms of influence over working conditions and compensation, than the most abjectly submissive antebellum slaves owned by the most sneeringly sadistic masters. So – yes – not only do I fear computers. I also despise them.

 

My fear of these accursed machines has two components. One is the ruinous cost of repair and replacement, and with it all the self-contempt capitalism imposes on one's psyche when one is a financial failure. The other is the sure knowledge a single accidental keystroke can destroy hours, days, weeks, even years of work. As a consequence, each time I write something, each time I digitize a photograph, I relive the sheer horror that followed the loss of all my life's work in the 1983 fire and – because of my dyslexic penchant for fucking up even the most simple procedures  – I am again awash in the self-hatred that is an inevitable component of dyslexia. Plus all these factors are multiplied to the Nth power by the sure knowledge should anything go seriously wrong with my computer, repair and replacement is unquestionably beyond the inescapable limits forever imposed on my life by my fiscal inadequacies – the fact that, in capitalist terms (which are the terms now forced on every one of us from the moment we are born), I am a loser, a worthless piece of shit, white trash, a bum.

The great irony implicit in all this – or, if you will, the sadistic joke played on me by a malevolent god – is that the computer, this alien machine I so despise, has been made utterly indispensable to my self-fulfillment. Writing, especially now that arthritic crippling has radically reduced my ability to photograph, is as essential to my psychological survival as breathing is to its physical counterpart. But the easy world into which I was born, an implicitly democratic realm wherein the only tools one needed for writing were pen and paper, or at the most an (indestructible) mechanical typewriter and a ream of foolscap, is no more. It has been replaced by the fiscally malevolent, implicitly hierarchical, zero-tolerance world typified by the computer: a realm in which even the formerly free-for-the-taking potential of self-expression has been turned into a profit center, with the result those of us for whom such expression is vital now must live – unless we are genuinely wealthy – in constant terror we will be silenced by poverty, which in this new world is the most effective censor of all. Thus the computer – this accursed machine on which my psychological survival is hopelessly dependent – is also the instrument that forces me, literally every day and like nothing else ever in my personal history, into intimate interaction with the miasma of neurotic negativity that underlies my operational consciousness.

When this computer went bad last week – when it began crashing just as I was attempting to finish my volunteer production of a monthly newsletter 50 other persons had come to depend on for information and entertainment – I first struggled for several hours to solve the problem. I am its founder, editor, primary writer and chief photographer. In these roles I also do all the infinitely tedious work formerly done by mechanical department employees: typesetters, compositors, photo engravers, stereotypers and all the others whose jobs have been abolished by the computer. But my computer knowledge is woefully inadequate – I have neither the money nor, in all probability, the remaining years of life to earn the degree in computer science essential to achieve the level of competence I increasingly seem to require – and so all my efforts failed. My word-processing system, it seemed, was dead. So were three other voluntary editorial projects. Nor would I, so silenced, be of any further use to 15 Now Tacoma. I had fallen into the abyss of hopelessness that is the defining characteristic of today's inescapable poverty.

In that state I wrote two notes:

I'm sorry to inform you my computer's word processing system crashed last night and cannot be revived. This kills the July newsletter and – depending on repair cost – it may kill the newsletter entirely...I am so very sorry to have let everyone down this way. As poor as I am, I should never have made the newsletter commitment to begin with, for I should have anticipated that equipment failure would eventually terminate my ability to produce it.

My deepest apologies,

Loren Bliss

The second, to some of my comrades on the 15 Now Tacoma Organizing Committee, said much the same thing, albeit in more detail:

My word processing system is dead beyond resurrection, which essentially ends life as I knew it until such time as I can afford the hundreds of dollars it will take to get it repaired or replaced – if indeed I will ever be able to afford it at all. 

The system crashed last night as i was finishing the monthly newsletter I produce for the apartment complex in which I live, destroying the newsletter and inflicting on me the odium of unfulfilled commitments to my neighbors with all the associated loss of credibility.

This also ends for the foreseeable future my ability to do anything of real value for anyone else, either  for 15 Now or via my blog, and it probably kills the latter as readership once lost through atrophy is never regained. 

The crash is total, which is to say my entire document file is effectively obliterated as any attempt to access anything in it crashes the entire WP system. 

Yes I have another computer, a new laptop generously given to me by my second wife based on our mistaken understanding it would be compatible with this custom-made desktop machine, a gift  I have been running since 2009.  But it turns out such compatibility  – like so much else in my life – is forever  beyond my financial reach.  Hence the laptop is effectively useless, not just because of systemic incompatibility imposed by  Microshaft monopolization policies, but also because of the  fact that – since computers to me truly are alien technology -- it would take me at least three months to become even marginally competent with a new system.

For the computer cognoscenti amongst you, the desktop operating system is Ubuntu, with Open Office Writer word processing and Gimp photo software. The laptop is Microsoft – Microsoft 8 as I recall – and (or so I am authoritatively told) Microsoft 8  is designed so that it cannot be used with any open source software without the intervention of a professional Nurd, which is of course prohibitively expensive. 

So there was no way to retrieve data from my desktop machine and download it onto the laptop even before the desktop WP system crashed -- and now of course everything on the desktop is beyond recovery, irretrievable because of my inability to pay the horrendous costs of salvaging it.  Worse, Microshaft 8 mandates purchasing Microsoft Office and – if one needs photo software – also buying PhotoShop, either of which are forever beyond my financial capabilities.

Plus of course there is also Microshaft's notorious vulnerability to viruses and malware.

In short I am not only shut down but reduced to utter uselessness.

Moreover this comes at the worst possible time in my life. I am scheduled for cataract surgery on the 15th and again on the 29th, and though the surgery is actually relatively minor, the associated medication regimen is a full-time commitment that demands rigidly scheduling my life for the next approximately four weeks, shackled to an  alarm clock set to ring every four hours. 

Because I do not have an automobile, this puts me in the odious and frankly terrifying position of being utterly dependent on other people for all vital errands because the uncertainty of the local transit system could interrupt the medication schedule with dire results. 

This same medication schedule combined with my lack of an automobile plus  post-operative 30-day limitations on lifting anything heavier than 15 pounds also prevents me from being able to schlep the desktop computer around in search of a repair facility that will not rip me off – with a likelihood of success, even under the very best of conditions, probably  about equal to that of finding an honest used car salesman.

While I certainly am and will presumably remain capable of walking from my dwelling to the Methodist church for 15 Now meetings, I see no point in my attendance because without the machinery required for writing and editing, I am of no use to the group (or anyone else including my neighbors in this apartment complex), and I would therefore be nothing but a body presumptuously occupying space but contributing nothing.  Thus very regretfully I am going to have to drop out of 15 Now (and to divorce myself from all my other former activities too) until such time as the eye-surgery protocols are complete and these other matters are resolved. 

When that happens – or more truthfully (because of the financial prohibitions that could well mean my lack of a WP system is permanent), IF that happens – I  will of course happily rejoin the 15 Now community.

Sorrowfully,
Loren Bliss 

 

Note that nowhere in these despairing letters did I ask for assistance from any of the people to whom they were addressed. So conditioned was I by my childhood, it never occurred to me to ask – and had it done so, I simply wouldn't have dared. Automatically – and as I now realize, with implicit unfairness to my friends, colleagues and comrades – I assumed no such help would be forthcoming. Again I was trapped by the bitter lessons of my childhood: my repeatedly proven belief any request of such magnitude would trigger not just a contemptuous refusal but severe reprisals as well. Beneath that emotional quagmire was a residual layer of reflexive terror as compelling as any whip-wielding overseer in its mandate for silence. Meanwhile, in sheer panic, I kept wrestling with the computer problem, trying desperately to find some way to save at least the newsletter text, an effort that culminated in an exhausting series of all-nighters – three in four days (with never more than two hours of sleep at any one time) – a relentless drive fueled by rage, frustration and a sense of karmic obstruction more infuriating than anything in memory.

Finally I forced myself to ask a computer-wise friend named Pat Fletcher for help, but the conversation quickly deteriorated into an argument. Seemingly the clash was fostered by my inability to speak Nurdish – that is, to clearly explain what was happening, what remedies I had attempted and what I had already learned would not solve the problem. But knowing what I know now, I cannot doubt our differences were at least equally fueled by the silent inertial momentum of my childhood conditioning. In any case, when I managed to salvage the newsletter text – the result of the third overnight effort, a quest prompted by a hunch and culminating in a lucky accident (I cannot possibly explain what I did, nor could I ever do it again) – Pat became the true savior of the entire project by rounding up its separate pieces and herding them into printable form. As a result of her work, the newsletter was published and distributed this morning. Thank you Pat.

 

Meanwhile five fellow organizing-committee members – Max Hyland, Katelyn Driskill, Alan OldStudent, Terry Fuller and Sarah Morken – had responded to my letter of disgruntlement. That anyone bothered to reply was itself a surprise; I had intended to vanish until the computer problem was solved, felt I should explain my impending disappearance, and anticipated nothing more than silence in response. But here within hours – in one instance within minutes – were their emails offering useful advice and urging me to persevere. Max went even further, and now thanks to a four-hour effort on his part, I have a new word-processing system plus new-found friendships with him and his partner Katelyn cemented by our mutual discovery we can talk of politics and history and art and personal experience until the proverbial wee hours and – best of all – do so with the blessed bohemian intensity that characterized the most memorable interactions of my years in Manhattan. Thank you Alan and Terry and Sarah. And thank you most of all Max and Katelyn: indeed you remind me of my late and long-ago SWP friends from Chelsea: Joe Bevando and Marilyn Werstler, with whom I traveled to Washington D.C. in the politically uncertain days after the Kent State and Jackson State massacres, there to demonstrate against Nixon, the Vietnam War and capitalist atrocities in general.

But none of this came into focus until this morning, after I finally managed to get something approaching a full night's sleep. I awoke realizing the events following the initial computer crash, which occurred around 8:30 Thursday evening (10 July 2014), had somehow flushed a negative paradigm from my subconscious, a process eerily parallel to how Max purged the corrupted WP system from my computer. All I knew in my first moments of wakefulness was a collection of words, “epiphany” and “the political as personal,” but I arose vowing to pull into the sharpest possible focus whatever it was they might symbolize. The above text is the result. Now though I realize I had already been on epiphany's brink when I posted my “sandbagged” message last night: “a classic example of the reality embodied in the line 'I get by with a little help from my friends'...expressions both of friendship and Working Class solidarity...” But a note to Pat this morning said it all: “I had no idea I am held in such high regard by my comrades in 15 Now. I am stunned, moved beyond my ability to express it.  In Seattle, even as the founding photographer of The Sun, I was always despised as an Outlander; here (in Tacoma) I am not just welcomed but valued, much as I was when here c. 1978-1982,  much as I always was in Manhattan and NJ.”

Obviously the neurotic reflexes associated with such a longstanding paradigm as described above do not vanish overnight. But at least I have finally learned how to ask for help when I need it.

Hence I will say it one more time: thank you Pat, Max, Katelyn, Alan, Sarah and Terry.

* * * * * *

Outside Agitation Elsewhere: (In Case You Missed It)

The Hobby Lobby decision, which I am coming to realize is the anti-woman equivalent of the anti-African American Dred Scott decision  (see also below), continues to provoke a perplexing combination of futile gestures (e.g., the doomed effort to ameliorate it with legislation rendered impossible by a permanently deadlocked Congress), and boiling anger further intensified by the growing understanding of its ruinous impact.

Not only does Hobby Lobby undermine the rights of women and minorities; it also opens, as never before in U.S. judicial history, the door to the imposition of Christian theocracy – just as its obediently misogynistic, dutifully anti-democratic Roman Catholic signatories clearly intend.

(Which prompts an impertinent question that is dark indeed: could it be President John Fitzgerald Kennedy's avowed and oft-proven defiance of Vatican rule was yet another of the motives that prompted his assassination?)

Thus when Al Jazeera America reported on the latest misogynistic atrocities  inflicted by Justice Scalia and his surrogate Inquisition, “Court Expands Reach of Hobby Lobby on Eve of Holiday Weekend,” I posted a pair of angry comments to the discussion thread. The first was pro forma:

There's no “maybe” about it: that's exactly what's happening, though the perpetrators are Christian clergymen, not mullahs.

Meanwhile, a few of us – Chris Hedges, Nat Hentoff, Jeff Sharlet, Susan Jacoby, Kevin Phillips and myself – have been warning for years about the encroachment of theocracy.

Having encountered Christianity's hatefulness in rural Washington and the South (where the colloquial name for the Ku Klux Klan is “the Saturday night men's Bible-study class”), I damn the theocrats as “Christofascists” and “JesuNazis.”

Too extreme? Hardly; I know from experience that is precisely what they are.

But we are the Cassandras of our era. Our words are belittled as sensationalism, rejected as paranoia.

The secular public is too smugly self-absorbed to awaken to the threat.

 

Shackled by political correctness, the Left dares not acknowledge the growing might of Christian fanaticism. That would require acknowledging both the stranglehold Christianity has on the U.S. masses and the parallel menaces of radical Islam and theocratic Judaism.

The moderate churches, mosques and temples are gagged by ecumenicism. That's why they do not speak out against the threat.

And the two major parties were long ago taken over by the fanatics. Read Sharlet's The Family: the Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power (Harper: 2008).

Now, like some reincarnation of the Inquisition, the Supreme Court is pouncing.

* * *

My second contribution to the “Court Expands” thread is a short piece of which I will remain proud at least for the rest of my life:

 

Inspired by #m, may I suggest the following:

SCOTUS MALORUM (court of evil); SCOTUS MENDACEM (court of lies); SCOTUS IGNORANTUM (court of ignorance); SCOTUS HORRIBILIS (court of horror)...and then my favorite:

SCOTUS ASINORUM (court of asses).

This last has true Roman lineage. It is from "pons asinorum, literally 'bridge of asses': a humorous name for the fifth proposition of the first book of Euclid, from the difficulty which beginners or dull-witted persons find in 'getting over' or mastering it." (A Dictionary of Latin Words and Phrases, Oxford University Press: 1998)

Then of course there is Scalia, a disease so awful even medical writers are afraid to describe it, lest the description itself vector the bacteria.

* * * * * *

Now though the work of SCOTUS HORRIBILIS has wreaked so much emotional havoc, the response is deteriorating into terrified giggles of satire and disbelief.  Hence “Scalia's Major Screw-Up: How SCOTUS Just Gave Liberals a Huge Gift.” Hence too my caustic retort:

Ms. Ruden's too-cute assumption, that because of its Hobby Lobby decision, SCOTUS ASINORUM “cannot refuse religious exemptions from selected tax obligations,” belongs in an editor's garbage can.

 

Her pathetic belief the U,S, is still a representative democracy – and her implicit belief in the consistency of judicial principle – is absurd. The U.S. has become a plutocratic empire. The sole function of SCOTUS MALORUM is perpetuating capitalist governance: absolute power and unlimited profit for the One Percent, total subjugation for all the rest of us.

In this context, making light of Hobby Lobby, which for the nation's women is the equivalent of the Dred Scott decision, is like laughing at the convulsions of a lynch-mob victim.

Meanwhile it's easy to imagine the Roberts Court granting “religious exemptions” to the Ku Klux Klan, known throughout the South as “the Saturday Night Men's Bible-Study Class.” But there is no possibility SCOTUS PRO DOCTRINA FIDEI would grant such dispensations to Left-leaning Protestants.

Indeed such a ruling from the Robber Court is even less likely than acquittal by the original Congregatio pro Doctrina Fidei – the Inquisition – which tortured suspected heretics until they confessed, then burned them alive in an “Auto da Fey” – a “celebration of faith.”

Besides which, all “religious exemptions” further the cause of theocracy, the One Percent's final solution to Working Class rebelliousness.

* * *

Then there was my response to a hostile poster on the same thread:

Since when is it "defeatist" to demand an unflinchingly realistic appraisal of reality? 

Indeed your accusation and Ms. Ruden's essay each illustrate major aspects of the most savagely counter-revolutionary (and therefore oppressively reactionary) tendency in U.S. society: making light of genuine horror, and denouncing those of us who are unafraid to name its awfulness.

Quoth Sun Tzu: "Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster."

LB/14 July 2014

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Computer Problems Sandbag This Week's Blog Post

A WORD-PROCESSING SYSTEM that would rather crash than communicate used up all the time I would normally have devoted to researching, writing, editing and posting this week's edition of Outside Agitatior's Notebook. It also severely delayed three other editorial projects, kept me away from a vital 15 Now Tacoma activity and was of course emotionally devastating as well. The problem is being solved -- a classic example of the reality embodied in the line "I get by with a little help from my friends"  -- women and men who have earned my most heartfelt thanks. Because of their rescue efforts, which are moving expressions both of friendship and Working Class solidarity, I will be fully operational again within a few hours. Please be patient; I hope to have some text posted as soon as  this Monday evening. Meanwhile my apology to those who accessed this space in anticipation of new material, and my gratitude for your continuing readership.  

LB/13 July 2014

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