July 20, 2015
By Mark Dyal
(continued)
After all this time, I am still governable: a mild-mannered citizen incapable of surviving without capitalist consumption; after all the books, workouts, and range time; after the vast amounts of space that have been blasted away and cleared of State sovereignty and freed of any concern for what the masses of people in this country do or think; after all of that, what am I doing here?
The karate dojo sought to secure our $1200.00 for a year’s worth of lessons with a brochure explaining that karate would make my son a better student. It said nothing about making him an effective fighter. The gun range I frequent has multiple posters and message board posts announcing that proficiency with firearms will help protect my property from criminal activity. They say nothing about learning how to use a gun to actually kill people.
Men that we all know exist but rarely visit are hard at work building bunkers and 300 Blackout capacity rifles, storing food and hoarding ammunition. They and everyone else we know say the same thing: “We are Ready!”
Ready for what? Ready to keep to ourselves, to keep clear of law enforcement, and to keep buying stuff?
What we see in all of this is the same denial of forces that do not coincide with the needs of the State and capitalism.
Karate is great. Pay to learn it but never use it. No! Better yet, use it to make yourself a better worker!
Firearm proficiency is great. Pay to learn it but never use it. Wait a minute … of course! Use it to protect your TV!
Bunkers are great. Pay to build one and to stock it with MRE’s and specialty canned goods but never use it. Better yet, add a new TV and a sofa and use it for entertaining!
Ammunition is great. Buy a shit-ton of it and never use it. Bury it in the back yard. Or … use boxes of it as paperweights, and individual bullets as unique bookmarks! Imagine what a statement a bullet bookmark makes: Want to show everyone you are ready to take reading to the next level? BAM! The Bullet Bookmark, for the reader who loves reading more than freedom.
AR-15’s are great. Pay to build one but never use it. Nah, that would be a waste and might tip off the buyer that point of the gun is to be BOUGHT. Instead, we can use it to fight crime!
If History has taught us anything it is that crime doesn’t pay, unless it is a thought crime, which is awesome, since intellectuals rarely have any other capacity for dereliction.
Revolutionary Hobbyists Unite! Only YOU can save capitalism.
What am I doing that truly undercuts the form of life that I pretend to be fighting? One of the great bourgeois political assumptions tells us that a change in consciousness amongst the people is necessary for creating institutional change. Having abandoned bourgeois politics and any idea of taking and serving either a State or a power, the aforementioned necessary condition for change seems silly and shortsighted, playing into the idea that mobs hold the key to freedom. But if we think about what it assumes for the individual man or woman, we find a kernel of critique: that there is value in reading, ranting, writing, proselytizing, and getting people to think differently about what is happening both around and to them; that consciousness is the key to converting people to a cause; but what happens when consciousness is not enough? What happens when consciousness amounts to being another niche market for capitalism? What happens when that niche market is more concerned with safety and waging a “war of ideas,” so said the slave, than with actually manifesting their newfound or hard fought consciousness in this world?
Bourgeois political thinkers believe that an awakening of consciousness is the most important component to social change, and that consciousness leads to conversion. But this is a dead end without an expression of violence. Without violence it is a recipe for stasis and misery.
“Without violence words are nothing.”
“In February 1963 a large heavy pipe device was turned over to the Army 61st Explosive Ordinance Disposal Team at Fort Sill Oklahoma. Examination of the pipe disclosed 35 pounds of explosive photoflash powder and two electric igniters capable of detonating the pipe with a damage radius of one fourth of a mile.”
I have a shiny new consciousness, one fought for in the Academy, but never in the streets. I’ve been a black nationalist, a white nationalist, a fascist, an anarchist, a pretty-boy, and a skinhead; but always, apparently, a capitalist. Through it all a lot of words have come and gone, though very few punches. Through it all I’m a different person from day to day, hell, minute to minute, but in the end I still do my duties to the State and its economy.
But I am disloyal – my awesome badass consciousness demands it! Shit, man, the State rapes loyalty: Pay Your Tribute. The misery you face to do so is on you – all that the State demands is docility. All the State has ever needed is a monopoly of violence. And you, looking out the window beyond your shiny Mac with the retina display to see happy men, women, and children playing in manicured lawns behind a security gate; you Mr. Neighborhood Revolutionary who can do little more than scowl at Operation Shield while it monitors your every step; you … You … YOU … are the guarantee that the interests of the State and capitalism will be defended, because after all this time, you are a threat to neither one.
“You are just an uglier, more miserable version of the blonde.”