New Albany is a state of mind … but whose? Since 2004, we’ve been observing the contemporary scene in this slowly awakening old river town. If it’s true that a pre-digital stopped clock is right twice a day, when will New Albany learn to tell time?
Showing posts with label self-censorship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label self-censorship. Show all posts
If you're just tuning in, or perhaps feel a tad confused, NA Confidential is not a music blog -- although music is a big part of my life.
These past few weeks I've taken to using songs to title my posts. Given the leaden weight of sheer, willful stupidity that has become the hallmark of American society, I find that it soothes me to listen to a song, then post thoughts and links beneath it.
It matters not whether the two are related, as the bulk of discussions in which I find myself engaged these days tends to feature me referencing a blog post I wrote and/or other source reading, and someone else filled with dazzling insight gleaned entirely from glancing at the title but not bothering to read the words therein.
This said, there'll be times when I'm more explicit, using a header borrowed from The Doors: WHEN THE MUSIC'S OVER, followed by a conventional title.
Like today.
In terms of subject matter, regular and genuine readers already know that while not entirely denuded of municipal social commentary, the blog is being reduced to a size capable of being stuffed into an emptied can of kippers.
Where it leads, I can’t yet say.
To prevent my friends and neighbors being punished for my truth-telling, certain local topics will remain off-limits. It’s what I must do. Fortunately I’ve studied the lives of dissidents, artists and free-thinkers in the former Soviet Union and other totalitarian societies, and they’ve taught me how to self-censor and defer to the power elites with dignity.
There hasn’t been much time to think it over – only six decades – but I’ve concluded that I’m a slow learner and a late bloomer. You need to be patient with me. Things don't always stick the first time -- or the fourteenth.
These observations were first made by a friend more than 25 years ago, and characteristically, it’s taken a whole pandemic for me to concede their accuracy. Better than a nuclear conflagration, I suppose.
In this week of milestones, which has included my 60th birthday, Pints&union’s second anniversary and the 15,000th blog post at NA Confidential, also comes the ideal opportunity to bring to fruition a promise I made all the way back in 2018.
My friends, the clock has expired. The sabbatical continues. Consider this my official withdrawal from active participation in the Resistance … to Mayor Gahan’s cult of personality, not President Trump’s.
Yes, I’ve been guilty of backsliding a time or two, as during the entire municipal election cycle in 2019. In retrospect, it was a last gasp. I made killer arguments, did the research, voluminously rested my case … and came out on the losing end, resoundingly; not once, but twice.
Slow learner, and all that jazz.
There has been a steady de-escalation of public affairs-oriented blogging (a.k.a., resistance programming) ever since, resulting from being busy in other aspects of life, as well as the need to reallocate non-paying writing time toward billable hours. The blog quota has been cut in half over a two-year span, and I’ve made a few farthings in the process.
The first six months of 2020 have seen the blog’s contents move ever further away from the proximity of the local Democratic Party’s movers and shakers. If for no other reason, simple pragmatism explains this shift.
The party’s ironclad commitment to one-way non-dialogue has resulted in my being muted, blocked and otherwise scourged over a period of seven (!) years; given this, it makes little sense to persist in scoring myriad solo debating points, virtually at will, against a AWOL opponent.
Although to be honest, dunking on them multiple times a week has proven to be almost more fun than sex.
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To summarize, in 2020, with only a few exceptions, I’ve drastically reduced instances of truth-telling with regard to City Hall and its loyal Democratic Party acolytes. Rest assured that “truth-telling” is no idle boast. Just the facts, ma’am. In effect, I’ve written the history. What’s left for me to say?
The truths I’ve told remain just that – true – but these truths never were proprietary to me alone. I was just the one who kept repeating them aloud, imagining truth would eventually matter. No regrets, although I’d have been better off using the time to learn a foreign language.
Well, here’s more truth: My situation is unsustainable. To paraphrase Chief Joseph, I will resist no more forever (or until 2023, whichever comes first). Gahanism is triumphant, at least for the moment.
I no longer have the energy to explicate the absurdities of this city’s “chosen few,” and I’ve come to understand that they’ve cornered me with a bizarre variety of "Reverse Pavlov’s Dog (Park)".
To wit: Whenever I tell the truth about City Hall, certain of its functionaries begin to salivate – and they respond by applying an electric cattle prod to someone standing close to me.
I’m not punished directly, because they know it’s impossible and inadvisable. They don’t even bother trying. Instead, they hit back indirectly, by making life miserable for someone near to me, rendering me responsible for whatever pain ensues. In turn, clearly the only way for the cattle prod to be withheld from use against those close to me who don’t deserve it is for me to muzzle myself.
In the strictest sense of politics, as the accumulation and dispensing of raw power, I must admit this is the single cleverest stratagem the Gahanites have yet mustered. They shrug as I dominate the rhetorical battles, then go full Pavlovian to win the war.
It's a genius-level tactic, one fully deserving of respect and public acknowledgment – and I’m being neither flippant nor sarcastic. Not one single bit. Political power duly amassed, but never deployed, is squandered.
Check, mate; I surrender, dear leader. Send a ordinance enforcement officer to fetch my sword, on a plate.
City Hall wins and I lose, although it’s worth noting that in reality many others are losing, too, because municipal governance in our contemporary era relies on putting a heavy finger on the scales, choosing winners and ditching losers.
You know it, I know it. They know it. Hell, they’re proud of it; so it goes, and that’s life in the Vaseline, every day, all the time. At the age of 60, with 15,000 posts under the bridge and slowly floating downstream, it has become inordinately tiring to fight the power on a daily basis.
Stick a fork in me. I’m done.
On the other hand, there is much consolation. The historical record has been conceded to me, and I’m absolutely confident that posterity will pass a favorable verdict. I’ve proven my points again and again, typically without debate, reply, discussion or justification in return … which of course provides even more reason for raising these points (and their hackles) in the first place.
Truly it’s time to let go, because I’m toast, a sentiment reflected by the eternally witty Mael brothers of Sparks in their new song, “Toast.”
I'm toast I'm toast I'm toast Nothing stays the same as it was Have I made it plain? I could not sustain Any hard won gain Now the choice is jam or butter
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Now for the pivot.
It should be clear that a pandemic “trumps” pettiness, and what’s more, it’s a presidential election year. As such, I’ve completed a circle that commenced in 2004, when this blog was founded from the sheer, accumulated exasperation of forever arguing national affairs to the exclusion of local issues.
At the time I barely grasped these grassroots concerns, thus inaugurating a learning curve that first encouraged involvement beyond my comfort zone, then full immersion into the prevailing insanity, and finally the long process of restoring equilibrium, which is the reason for today’s column.
My viewpoint has widened again, far beyond this grubby burg. We’d have been spending much of 2020 talking about the election, anyway, but the arrival of a pandemic upped the ante. After all, COVID is a harmful, global virus.
It’s also the Great Revealer, a truth serum of epic dimension, illustrating that a crisis seldom causes folks to change their minds. It exacerbates what was there already, even if submerged or camouflaged. Humans dislike change. We double down on whatever superstition got us here.
And local Republicans have gone down doubling so far in 2020.
I’ve made many friends with conservative Republicans since my campaign in 2015, and I’m absolutely grateful for them. Granted, I’ve joked that you see me talking politics with Republicans them only because the DemoDisneyDixiecrats anti-socially distanced me years ago. It isn’t true; I enjoy their company, and have no plans to alter this dynamic.
However, it’s also important to recall the words of Israeli prime minister Shimon Peres: “When a friend makes a mistake,” he said, “the friend remains a friend, and the mistake remains a mistake.”
As it pertains to the pandemic – to Trump, Mike Pence, Black Lives Matter, the veracity of science versus religion, bailouts for the wealthy, capital accumulation and a plethora of other current briefs, I disagree with my friends on the Right, in some instances strongly. I think they’re mistaken. When we shared a distaste for the maddeningly dysfunctional local Democratic Party’s megalomania, bigger-ticket differences were easier to ignore.
Presently, not so much, but I never lied to anyone. I’m a leftist, and when it comes to politics in a presidential election year, it means I’ll be found camping in a locale much closer to where the Democrats bivouac, even if I retain my fundamental disdain for the American two-party system and its less salubrious practitioners on all sides of the aisle.
Here we are. On national topics, I can broadly agree with at least some elements of the municipal Democratic Party establishment; otherwise, we share a mutual and understandable loathing.
As for the Republicans, in my view the local cadres have been overtaken, exposed and struck deaf, blind and dumb, first by Trump, then COVID. However, their ongoing efforts to promote fiscal responsibility and governmental transparency are still worthy of my support.
The GOP, overall? It still isn’t me.
Pertaining to NA Confidential moving forward, it’s to be almost entirely a daily personal diary with post titles taken from songs. While not entirely denuded of municipal social commentary, it will be reduced to a size capable of being stuffed into an emptied can of kippers. Where it leads, I can’t yet say.
To prevent my friends and neighbors being punished for my truth-telling, certain topics will remain off-limits. It’s what I must do. Fortunately I’ve studied the lives of dissidents, artists and free-thinkers in the former Soviet Union, and they’ve taught me how to self-censor with dignity.
Yep. It’s impossible to come back without first going away. Vive la résistance!
In the Soviet Union, during those long decades of heavy-handed state censorship, there was a saying among writers.
It was "this one’s for the drawer," or "I'm writing for the drawer," meaning there was no hope whatever that what was being written would be suitable for publication. The words were written in the knowledge that they'd be consigned to the desk drawer, where maybe later -- most often, after the writer was dead -- something might change and his or her words would be read and appreciated.
Samizdat was the practice of illegal publication; recopied by hand, mimeographed and later photo-copied. These illegal publications often were anonymous by necessity, with readership small but often more widespread than might be assumed. It's almost a quaint notion in our current, fractured age, this idea that truth mattered.
Maybe I'll try writing for the drawer, too. Blog readership is down, so maybe I can hide in plain site just for once. After all self-censorship wears on a man.
Here goes.
There's a pandemic going on. If you're in the local indie food and drink business and you're not taking masks and social distancing seriously, you're writing off a big portion of the potential customer base in order to appease a smaller percentage of loudmouthed know-nothings.
I wish there was sufficient unity of purpose among business owners to actually call out the scofflaws honestly, and openly. It won't happen, though. Speaking only for myself during this time, it's a tremendous crisis of conscience for me. I'm tempted to walk around town like Diogenes, asking service industry people, "Why are acting as though the aim is to bring everyone down with you?"
Do you read the news -- or is the cognitive dissonance too great, and those lies you're telling yourself too persuasive? Your optics are horrendous, and your acting supremely bad.
Not only are you embarrassing all of us, but ignoring reality and pretending like the pandemic isn't still with us is setting the stage for bad things to happen to the rest of the segment. If you're dismissing public health, are you also chucking food safety and other hygienic standards into the bin?
Yes, it's true; narcissistic bad actors have always been with us. But they're glaringly obvious at present, and to be honest, I resent it a little more each day as so many of you reject science in favor of voodoo.
Well, that felt good.
Now into the drawer it goes, where no will see it until much, much later.
Howard W. Campbell, Jr. is the central figure in Kurt Vonnegut’s 1962 novel Mother Night. Campbell is an American by birth who comes of age in Germany between the wars after his father is relocated for work.
When his parents move back to the United States, Campbell -- now as fluent in German as he is in English -- remains in Berlin. He makes a living as a playwright and marries a suitably Aryan woman (her father is chief of police) with whom he is passionately in love.
Entirely and almost narcissistically apolitical, Campbell learns that leading Nazis admire his plays, and as conflict again draws near, he is approached by Joseph Goebbels’ propaganda ministry, where soon he is employed, eventually becoming the wartime radio voice of American pro-Nazism -- think Tokyo Rose, Lord Haw-Haw and Axis Sally.
However, just before the onset of open hostilities, Campbell encounters a mysterious American from the War Department named Frank Wirtanen who urges him to become a double agent. At first Campbell refuses, but later changes his mind.
Consequently, throughout World War II, in the act of broadcasting on behalf of the Nazis, Campbell regularly passes coded messages to American listeners by means of deliberate pauses, coughs and other audible signals. He never knows exactly what information he is conveying; he merely conveys it via these artful inserts.
In other words, the fictional double agent Howard W. Campbell, Jr. manages to transmit crucial facts in the struggle against fascism while using neither words nor pictures. No essays, memes, polemics, or Photo Shop cleverness. Not even numbered ciphers. Only sounds and cadences, an inflection or two, the clearing of the throat -- maybe a purposeful mispronunciation.
I need a crash course in this covert and subtle way of communicating because it seems I’m back in lockdown when it comes to (clicks tongue) about (wheezes), not to mention (hums opening chord of Bob Dylan’s “Idiot Wind”) and (hiccups).
Did you catch all that?
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Remember the Chinese guy with the bag facing the line of tanks 31 years ago in Tiananmen Square?
Substitute “Hauss” for “Tiananmen” and replace the sack with a six-pack of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense Ale, and that’s me in Nawbany. Everything I do and say is being watched, even when I’ve done and said nothing. Even my silence speaks volumes.
Therefore, in an ill-fated effort to avoid the summer’s newfound HEAT from (taps Keith Moon’s signature drum roll from “I Can’t Explain” on the microphone stand), I’ve been hammering the other side of the political aisle with nasty polemics … as with this tweet.
Welcome to 2020, when the rapturous tones of the GOP's robber baron capitalist death cult blossom into fun and games for all. "Die for Jesus and the economy" doesn't have quite the pull of "Remember the Alamo," but they don't write or read, do they?
After all, I actually AM a socialist, and maybe if some harsh invective is hurled against the Right, the Left will give me a reprieve, except they don’t, and even more obtusely, in spite of it all, I continue to have marvelous conversations with local Republicans, with whom I often disagree -- but yet we’re able to chat substantively in a fashion eschewed by the (lisp), who (oink oink) and grease the trap door.
Tanks for nothing. It is highly frustrating, and tantamount to a sort of exile-in-place. There are so many things going unaddressed that I want to write about, but unless -- wait a minute -- what’s that monotonous sound, the whirring from high up … damn, there’s a helicopter right above the house, and footfalls on the ceiling …
There are some Swedish meatballs in the fridge if anyone’s hungry.
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Let’s play a different game.
If I were to begin a column with just this small list of titles, entirely alone and without explanation, what sort of point do you think I’d be trying to make?
Death Throes of the Dipshits Nadir for the Know Nothings Twilight on the Turds
Plainly there’s not enough information to judge, but you would, anyway. You’d automatically think it had something to do with that politician fellow whose name I can’t mention aloud for fear of the first tank operator deciding to drop it into gear.
For your information, these three titles refer to my forthcoming book about the GOP’s numerous self-inflicted wounds, something that should endear me to the area Biden cadres.
It won’t.
As a side note, I’ve been resting my speaking voice for more than three months, imagining that it might enable me to sing Freddie Mercury’s parts.
It didn’t work, either.
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Six months have passed since my first column of 2020, which dropped on January 2. Here’s a quick recap.
… For a very long time I’ve been threatening to alter my terms of engagement and involvement with local affairs. Admittedly, these previous resolutions have been miserable failures. As with the fictional mobster Michael Corleone, just when I think I'm out, they pull me back in.
More accurately, I willfully pull myself back in, but not this time.
After 15 years, it’s time for a real sabbatical, at least six months to start and then with various options for renewal.
I couldn’t have selected a more chaotic juncture to issue myself a report card. Looking back from where we are right now, January seems like an Eden-like vignette from another dimension on a different planet.
Since I wrote the above words America has experienced the onset of a pandemic, courtesy of a nasty novel virus, at first encroaching and then exploding. COVID has settled in for a long stay, and rather than deal with it in any coherent fashion, we’ve leaped with both feet into an unprecedented, hopeful movement to at last deal with racial and social justice – and, of course, what’s hopeful from one perspective is brutally reactionary in another.
Boy, is it. But we don’t have problems like these in Nawbany, you know, like in those OTHER places.
Did I mention that as these happenings have rendered the country even more divided and fractious than before, we still have a presidential election to contest?
Listen, contrary to popular opinion I believe my sabbatical has gone quite well, thank you. The sabbatical has been so marvelous that it’s being renewed through year’s end, because the problem remains as it was when I penned the year’s first column: there’s nothing one can do when there’s nothing to be done.
And when they all have such abysmally thin skins.
My disengagement has proceeded swimmingly. I haven’t attended any city council or bored with works meetings, either live or via Zoom. Mentions about key elected officials have been reduced 80% or more at this portal. By and large I’m resisting the temptation to comment about the chicanery and corruption. When I have, they've been shadows of my former brilliance.
I’ve been a good boy, overall. The clique has to be delighted. They’ve blocked, muted and systematically excluded me from public dialogue, and I’ve voluntarily accepted their verdict.
I’m no longer a factor. Why, then, are the engines revving again?
But it's okay.
Admittedly there are times when it isn't easy living with the Groucho creed ("I don't care to belong to any club that will have me as a member"). Silence, whether voluntary or enforced, is little more than tacit acknowledgment of patience; one cannot come back without first going away.
Let me tell all of you something that's important to me.
When I post a blog that is available for viewing by anyone on Planet Earth with access to an Internet connection, I've done so for a reason. Actually, for two reasons.
First, I hope someone reads it. Moreover, I hope many people read it. I don't publish for any other reason, and I can't fathom why anyone would.
Second, my name's right there. It's my writing, and no one else's. You may agree or disagree, and that's fine. But they're my words, and I intend to take ownership of them, thank you.
Until today, I never thought that what I do in terms of writing is particularly noteworthy, precisely because it seemed to me the very nature of minimum default. Today, for reasons that I'm asked not to reveal, suddenly it looks like my minimum default constitutes incredible courage and genuine principle.
And that's a sad, sad thing, for all the wrong reasons. I'd love to tell you why, but I can't. So be it.
There for a fleeting moment I thought there was light at the end of the tunnel.
Instead ... well, just take it from Kurt Cobain: "Whatever, never mind."
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