Small acts of resistance

Information is a weapon and resistance is a commitment. Everyone who wants to rule the world from the top down needs your support. That support could be given begrudgingly, it could be passively given through ignorance or extorted out of people with force and fear.

The greatest tyranny is not the totalitarian state such as the Third Reich or North Korea. The all controlling state is inherently weak and more the brutality it needs to exert the faster it races towards its own self destruction. What we should fear most is not the overt but the subtle; the system that seeps into every facade of life until it's almost invisible and accepted as a part of daily life.  

Take something like racism, as recently as forty - fifty years back racist language and assumptions were not questioned and where part of normal conversation. People didn't think of themselves as racist even as they joked and repeated old worn stereotypes or told hearsay stories that where 99% bullshit. If no one resisted the status quo of slavery and Jim Crow then nothing would have changed but these institutions didn't arise out of a vacuum and they did have a tremendous amount of power. They had power because so many people benefited from the oppression of a few.

If you looked back at the Antebellum South it was easy to see how slavery benefited the plantation owner but cheap cotton also benefited the owners of the industrial spinning mills. The profitably of the mills meant dividend payments to stockholders and higher wages for skilled labor. Every level of government collected taxes on the commerce and in the end the consumer was able to buy cotton cloth at a fraction of the price it was before. Plantation owners had to view their slaves as inferior to justify their "paternal" care of them. To see them as equal might mean having to question the whole unfairness of the system and give up the benefits that derive from it. If you every wondered why the South fought to protect slavery just keep in mind that in 1860 the value of all the slaves was estimated at around 2 billion dollars -that's 2 billion dollars in the currency of that time. Alaska was purchased for only 7.2 million dollars just after the Civil War.

Normally I like to write about art. Art is fun but also art is a tool to chip away at the status quo. It is a liberating force that can thumb its nose at authority, touch on truths at a psychological level and provide the platform and space to ask the really important questions about life. Right now we live in a small golden age of communications. The internet remains an open form, though governments around the world are working on how to restrict and block it. Before the internet is flooded with nothing but porn, cats, gossip and pop-up ads we have a chance to exchange and compare ideas and form communities without physical barriers.

Part of what I am writing against is all crap that is thrown at the public -the stuff that nickle and dimes us into wage-slavery -the entertainment / propaganda industrial complex that only makes us feel insecure and unhappy -the social road blocks that divide and alienate each person into a lonely cycle of eat, sleep, work. Art is an act of resistance. Being with your friends and enjoying other people without spending money is an act of resistance. Sharing your thoughts and feelings without being filtered, censored or watched is an act of resistance. Listening and thinking are acts of resistance. Yes these are all small acts of resistance but from the small acts you'll find the courage and inspiration to move on to bigger things.

In the Mailbox     

I don't always get to the Mailbox, having a Blog is nice but I type slow and so much of life gets in the way of my hobbies. I do appreciate every e-mail I get.

 In my past post Tom The Collector Of Everything, I had several people contact me about some of their favorite comic books and magazines.  Horseshit magazine came up more than once. I'm looking into a story that Horseshit magazine did a parody centerfold drawing of Disney's Magic Kingdom where the cartoon characters were engaged in a variety of sex acts. Disney supposedly sued and lost but has used the case to justify several extensions of copyright protection for Mickey and the gang. Copyright protection in the United States is almost a century long but it keeps Mickey Mouse out of the hands of pornographers.    

With Map Of The World one reader took me to task that I didn't mention on how Henry Hudson died. It's most likely Hudson, his young son and several loyal crew members died of exposure after the rest of the crew set them adrift and a mutiny. That's always one of the pitfalls of being an explorer and trailblazer in any field -not everybody is going to see your vision or have your determination. 

A mural in Phoenixville Pennsylvania. Some people have their picture taken in front of it before they leave town for college or military service.

From readers in Australia, the summer heat wave is relentless. I had joked that 50 degrees Centigrade sounded so much cooler than 110 Fahrenheit. The response was in that kind of heat it's hot as hell and humor evaporates quickly.  This one picture of a storm off the coast has circulated on the news and internet. It gives you an idea of how extreme the weather is. No one in New South Wales thinks global warming is a hoax as the Darling River dries up into a muddy ditch.      

For America's Peculiar Love Affair I was sent this political cartoon. It also came with the suggestion that all restrictions on gum ownership be lifted but every single gun be registered and linked to an actual owner. Every time a gun is lost, stolen or changes ownership the police are notified and it's recorded. Every purchase of ammunition is signed for -just like the purchases of pseudoephedrine. Guns still kill more people than meth, we should at least treat gun crime as seriously as drugs.