The buzz in Washington today was of course the General Stanley McChrystal article that appeared in the Rolling Stone this past week. After reading the fucker today, I have come to several conclusions:
1.) While the Rolling Stone does more interesting reporting on politics than they do on music, their writers tend to rely on gotcha journalism over intelligent reporting and they use childish adjectives to (I assume) make themselves sound hip.
2.) It seems General McChrystal’s staff, much like the musicians that normally populate the Stone’s pages, got hammered with the writer during the fucking interview and became a bit loose lipped.
3.) This self-induced quagmire that we’ve found ourselves in Afghanistan appears as equally fucked as our current situation at home.
4.) Jann Wenner remains creatively bankrupt. (This is not actually related to the article, I just think he’s a pussy whose magazine has not been relevant for years and I thought I’d throw that in there).
I say all of this having (to the dismay of many of my followers) supported President Obama’s decision for the troop increase in Afghanistan. I maintain that it’s been the only real promise he’s kept from his campaign.
What I think is important to take out of the Rolling Stone article is not the drama it will cause to unfold tomorrow (as the mainstream media runs with the story of McChrystal’s visit to the White House to be reprimanded for his comments), but, instead, this concept that I have continued to put forth that we must become more conscious of the fact that we are a people controlled by those in power. And, unless we are willing to stand up and fight, we will continue to be mired in bullshit much like our current position in Afghanistan.
Look at it this way:
- As our soldiers are fighting this war on the ground, their superiors are getting drunk with Rolling Stone journalists and disparaging every colleague and White House official who questions their decision making.
- As the oil spill continues to gush in the Gulf and good people are volunteering their weekends with their children to initiate the cleanup effort, the CEO of BP is attending a yacht race with his son.
- As the Obama White House continues to blame the failed attitudes of the previous administration that let us into much of our current mess, the president spends a leisurely fucking day at the golf course with his VP.
Does that put my political vision into perspective a bit better?
I never said any of this shit was going to be easy, but it’s most important to put ourselves in a shared mindset before we achieve the first steps towards revolution.
So, fuck golf. And, once again, fuck Jann Wenner (whose revolution died decades ago).
- Freemont Barrington
Friends of Freemont,
I apologize for the delay in presenting my analysis of last Tuesday’s presidential address in upstate New York at West Point (the second most popular place that New Yorkers go to die, next to Florida). Like the president, I needed some time to weigh my feelings about the troop increase in Afghanistan. My opinion on this matter may surprise you, oh Friends of Freemont. So, it is important to keep a hold onto your balls and your cunts as you read this message carefully.
Let me start by saying that I am not speaking about the effectiveness of the president’s speech on Tuesday. Similar to his most recent speeches to the American public, it lacked the inspirational quality that most Obama supporters had become accustomed to along the campaign trail. He was flat in his sincerity towards the sacrifice of sending an additional 30,000 troops into Afghanistan and, for the most part, vague in his description of the mission. I do, however, support the decision made by the president to increase the troop level in Afghanistan with a proposed 2011 scale-back. As a leftist who vehemently opposed the Iraq war from its pathetic beginning during the Bush Administration, I realize that this standpoint may need some explanation for you pacifist fucks who will shit on me after this post.
I think that it’s first most important that I make it clear that, although I may support the idea of peace and generally refrain from physical violence when it comes to protests, I am not a pacifist and recognize the occasional necessity to use violence as a method of obtaining social or political justice. In saying this, I also realize that there is a huge difference between backing a small political uprising and throwing my support behind the corrupt, money-hoarding, capitalistic machine that is the US military. As such, I throw my support to them from outside their war-torn barricades with a watchful and critical eye. Let it be known that unlike these neo-hippies that have turned up in this world— that work for City Year and live off their parents’ money and clog up the subway system in the name of justice and equality when all they are really are doing is hassling every Tom, Dick, and Jane that passes them by— I live for my ideas about the body politic and will, if necessary, die for them. This revolution I build is not a way of life. It is inside of me. It is me. And if any of you FOF’s out there are not serious about my words, you might as well drop out now. Because I don’t have time for nonsense anymore. I’m getting just too fucking old.
So, let me be absolutely clear about where my loyalties lie. Many of my ideals are founded upon the hippy (or yippie) movement of the 1960s. I have favored the incorporation of such radical philosophies and revolutionary tactics into the modern political landscape in order to push our agendas. However, if you are anything of a social guru (as I am), you will know that the real hippies that were born of this movement no longer exist. Most of the good ones are dead. Others have gone into hiding. Still others sold out to make a buck a long time ago and joined the ranks of the rest of the sheep. What has evolved since is a population of people that identify with the spirit of the hippy movement, but carryout nothing of political or social significance. They are dirty fucking cunts and bastards who are completely incapable of producing any intellectual analysis of the modern dilemmas that confront us. These neo-hippies have never been anything of worth to me or to the rest of this planet. They are a drag upon everyday Amerikana and when the revolution begins, I will support a united front that will be formed to carryout their extinction.
It can be a bit hard to distinguish a neo-hippy. So, I will provide a few examples to help diagnose this cancer. Neo-hippies may sometimes appear under the guise of a ‘yuppie.’ Chances are they might be both. But let me give you an example: if you are at a coffee shop and the woman in front of you is ordering a fair trade, organic blend and she’s quite specific (and cunty, may I add) about the portion of skim milk she’d like put inside her cup and next to her sits her baby sleeping inside a $700 Bugaboo stroller, she is most likely a neo-hippy. She’s college educated, has married a rich lawyer, and is a stay-at-home mother who imposes her neo-hippy ideals upon her infant son who will grow up to become a douche bag nurtured by the effects of an overbearing mother. He, too, will most likely fall into the passive lifestyle of a neo-hippy and thus this despicable lifestyle will be perpetuated.
The appearance of the neo-hippy may also be masked in the opposite extreme. Let’s try this one on for size: you are exiting the subway and two young men with long hair who are giving off a disgusting odor and sitting on a guitar case accost you for “a few bucks to catch a bus to N-Y-C.” Chances are these smelly, Type-A personality, worthless jiz rags are nothing more than a couple of kids whose idea of fighting the system was to drop out of the college that their parents were paying for and renouncing modern comforts like a rented apartment and a washing machine in order to travel the country hassling their friends and relatives for money and a couch to sleep on when they come into town for a Phish concert. The diagnosis here is the same: NEO-HIPPY.
Of course, in the middle of this somewhere, lies the American liberal actor/musician. This famous fella raises awareness for causes he deems noble and generally opposes the idea of violence as an answer to anything because he has been so lucky in life to benefit from such a wonderful country and sees the idea of war as a contradiction to the idea of America. Yes, folks, the Michael Moore’s and Bono’s of this world could very well be nothing more than a neo-hippies— as they hide behind their veiled causes and passive aggressive pacifism.
Where the fuck were these attention-grabbing, famous Obama supporters during his campaign when he openly supported raising the stakes on the war in Afghanistan? Did they hope that, in voting for Obama, that this war would disappear? That the president would sing a gentle lullaby to each one of his liberal campaign organizers, promising them that all his talk of Afghanistan along the way was only a front to draw in Independent voters? Well, I say— fuck Michael Moore’s cowardly and misguided letter to the president posted on his website. And I say fuck Bono and his conceit. Actually, I’ve always hated Bono— causes or not. I would love nothing more than him to expire from this planet simply because his music is as intellectually stimulating and mind-numbingly terrifying as George W. Bush’s extended reading of “My Pet Goat” after he was notified of the 9/11 attacks.
The Neo-hippies for years have set out to make their way into our homes and into our hearts, or perhaps I should say our stomachs — feeding on our food supply like parasites. It is up to us, FOF’s, to recognize this threat on the neo-left movement and to stand firm as a counter to its being. The neo-left is a modern political movement built on the principles established by the new Left of the 1960s — the Huey P.’s of the Panthers and the real hippies of Yippie Revolution — and we’re not going to disappear into the social landscape, to suffocate in this muck of indifference, or to hide behind an insincere agenda of bullshit. The Revolution may just have to begin with a war. It might just have to start with a necessary evil.
The president didn’t start the war in Afghanistan, but he has vowed to finish it. It was a smart move politically at a moment when his popularity was in decline. It was an act of strength when his credibility as president was weakening. And it was a call to arms with an exit strategy in mind — one that is not based upon the idea of nation building.
Our job, therefore, oh Friends of Freemont, members of the neo-left movement, will be to keep the president accountable by any means deemed necessary for the next several months leading up to the proposed scale-back in July of 2011. Now, that is a smart, non-passive revolution that I can get behind.
There will be no candle-lit vigils. There will be no concerts for peace. There will be no knocking on doors. The Revolution will be quite embedded within you by then. And you’ll be receiving further instructions from the appropriate operatives when the time comes.
Until then— the enemy shall be among us within their disguised indifference. So, be smart with your methods.
King of the Neo-fights,
Freemont Barrington
It’s been weeks and weeks and still no clear-cut plan in Afghanistan from the White House. I suppose this has become the norm for the administration—slow and careful calculations with a side of indecision. I wouldn’t fault just the president, though, as the Boston Globe reported this morning of the unsurprising ambiguity of John “the coward” Kerry on the Afghan war. This in addition to the article on CNN.com that documented the ineffectiveness of the killing drones that have been weaving through Afghanistan and Pakistan, whose use of which has been publicly and whole-heartedly supported by Joe “Say It Ain’t So” Biden. All of this leading me to the conclusion that we are fighting a drone war on two fronts: in Afghanistan, where the programmed robots are killing the innocent, and at home, where the programmed robots are feeding on the blood of the American public. The only difference is that the Afghan drones have only existed for 8 years, while the American drones have been probing our assholes for decades.
If we continue to support the use of drones in Afghanistan with the efficiency they are working at now, we will do more harm than good. And, clearly, the same could be said for our fight at home with the drones in Congress. I say that it’s high time for these drones to be retested, friends of Freemont. Their efficiency levels need to be held accountable and if improvements aren’t made, we will need to either reprogram these worthless machines or else have them destroyed. I’m not one for sci-fi, myself. I never believed those horse shit movies Terminator and The Matrix. Humans will always be smarter than drones. We just have to learn how to be human again… and fight back.
The revolution will begin here, folks. Not on television. Perhaps there will be carrier pigeons. Certainly there will be performance art. Interpretations will be left to the reader. Symbols will not be explained, but disseminated freely. You’ve joined already, you just don’t know it.
So, drone on, mother fuckers. But know that Freemont is beginning his programming research.
