I have to say that I'm feeling fairly
stereotypical today. Sporting a Travis Bickle mohawk, I'm sitting in
a diner in Pottstown, Pennsylvania waiting for a tattoo appointment.
I understand that I'm not nearly punk enough to call myself as such,
but for the God-fearing, camo-jacket wearing denizens of this
particular wood-paneled, egg-slinging establishment, I might as well
be Sid Vicious's ghost come back to haunt them with my inability to
play the bass guitar.
However, a thought occurred to me.
Shortly after writing this, I intend on jumping on the HuffPo or
finding a newspaper and reading about some current events. Does that
make me punk? It's true that the punk movement cannot be separated
from strong political leanings. Not that the Sex Pistols were
paragons of political awareness, but it has been a long standing
staple of punk music that you must know at least enough about
politics to be pissed off about it.
In that sense, many, many (too many)
Americans are punk. Too many Americans know only enough to be pissed
off (thanks a lot, Fox news), but far too few know enough to in any
way turn that anger into anything that could be useful. It's enough,
I suppose to scream and shout and get it off your chest. It's not
useful when that screaming and shouting and getting it off your chest
turns in to an actual political movement that has divorced itself of
facts, reasoning, logic or understanding of the current political
climate and instead focuses on a ridiculous feeling of victimization
somehow felt by many, many white Christians (translation: the largest
demographic in the country) that stems from the fact that they have
to pay taxes like everyone else.
And here's where intelligence comes in
to it. Because, I believe in this day and age, if you want to be a
punk in the rebellious sort of sense, the best thing you can do is to
become intelligent. And not just “Hey man, I read this one article
one time about how much a bomb costs and now I'm a military
bureaucracy hating anarchopunk freegan with horrible, horrible
white-boy dreadlocks!” sort of bettering yourself. I mean reading
lots about lots.
For instance, did you know that Thomas
Paine himself was all for Social Security, public schools and Medicare?
Ya know, those things that the standard Tea Party member would burst
a few veins getting upset about. And the real problem isn't that
they're being told an endless, factually desolate narrative by Fox
news and Drudge report, the real problem is that they simply don't
know. Honestly, how many people have ever really read “Common
Sense”? Or can name another one of Paine's works? I can't, but
that's my point, isn't it? Here I am using it against the Tea Party
when I don't really know much about it myself. And that, folks, is
not Sexy.
And so I'm starting a new segment:
Intelligence Is Sexy. Now, there are limits to this. It's not like we"re going to learn quantum physics (or even anything approaching
Pre-Calc). We can, however, try our best to learn at least one
valuable, proven, intelligent thing in a time period of a week or so.
That's where you all come in. I am now accepting ideas for areas that we
should all brush up on. Obviously we're not going to be able to read
Bolano's 2666, nor are we going to become world-class horticulturists
in one week, but we can at least start.
So now it begins: Tell me things I
need to find out about and let's do it together. If we can't, we'll say why.
Because, it's not necessarily about knowing that much, but also about
being able to find out, should we need to.
And by the way, this diner, the Ice
House, does a surprisingly excellent Eggs Benedict. If you ever find
yourself here in Pottstown and need breakfast, come
here. And they also make their own donuts which, I'm not a guy with a sweet tooth but HOLY GOD they are GOOD. Like, worth a trip good.
- Kid
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