Mentally Replaying: Butthole Surfers
I'd rather be sleeping
Considering: the entry below
Desiring: peace
Aches and Complaints: Where the FUCK is my Midol!?!?!
Enjoying: Gibby-wisdom


I have to get to work but something I've been thinking about is not letting me have any peace. It comes from several idle conversations us lefty liberal peacenik hippie commie fags like to have with regard to saving the world.

I strongly believe that the opressed and the indigent are prone to violent crime as a direct result of their desperation. While I'm sure this thought process can likely provide a good springboard for investigating crime in urban America I'm mostly thinking about incidents of terrorism, such as suicide attacks.

In (gross over-)general(ization), people don't feel moved to commit crimes when they have a good set up between their station in life, their friends and family and their income. At least such people don't normally go in for violence as an automatic default of the crimes they commit. People of middle and upper income tend to stick to white-collar crime. If a well-off person robs you, you find out when you get your credit card or bank statement. When someone who is poor robs you, you usually know right away because he is threatening you.

But when someone decides to strap on a bomb and march into a crowded cafe he's not interested in the wealth of the assembled people, the assembled people *are* that which he wishes to take with him.

But the problem with this is that there are places in the world where this is common and places where it has never happened and natives fervently pray it will never happen.

Now the line that I'm trying to describe here is the one between a hit and run bomber and a suicide bomber. The U.S. has had bombings over politics and race issues, but never honestly dealt with someone who gave up his life while taking others' with a bomb.

To my mind the primary difference is that in the U.S. the sort of desperation people face has to do with income. The sort of abject humility someone might face will come more from a difference in class status and income than the racial and religious differences of other parts of the world. Granted racism used to be par for the course, but on an empirical level racism is mostly gone. (The races still aren't treated equally, but I'm talking about the opportunity for income not racial profiling.)

In other parts of the world race and ethnicity will have a lot to do with what someone will be allowed to do for a living and the environment in which his children will grow up.

Tell me this. At the age of 12 you start going with your dad to an orchard where you can pick different fruits to sell at the market. This is your job because the school has offered all it can to you and bettering your education pretty much requires leaving the country. So you choose to help your family with the fruit stand. The daily drive out is ten miles on an unpaved road. The drive takes about two hours because each and every car must be searched for anything that could construct a weapon.

When it's your father's turn you are both instructed to get out of the vehicle. Your father is asked many innane questions. They are the same questions that he is asked everyday and often by the same people. When he answers, your father (who is, we'll say, 40), has to respond to the soldiers (who are often 18 - 20) with "sir" and be very polite and submissive. If he raises his eyes to meet theirs they will get angry. If he forgets to say "please" or "thank you" they will get angry. If he asks any questions of him they will get angry. And that is not including the ones that will expect "gratuities."

So tell me. How do you watch this and avoid growing up to be a very angry person? If you grow up and it's time for your own family to get started how do you not look around and say "there is no fucking way I'm going to be my father?" How will you ever think of the race of the soldiers as made up of real human beings?

How can you even conceive of hope?

I would never support suicide killers, but sometimes it's hard not to see their point.

So it comes to the crux of something I've been thinking about. Say we as a country had endless funds and felt like being altruistic for a change. Say we went into some of the most economically oppressed places in the world and basically created an economy, built houses, established farms and/or ranches. Basically we gave them nice stuff to live on.

Would they forget how mad they were at their neighbors? If we can't buy love can we buy peace?

Does even thinking about that give a nod to the merits of general complecency and the anesthetic values of a materialist society? Would a utopia really bring peace and a fruitful civilization, or a comatose humanity? Am I selling out the potential for creativity and enlightenment in favor of calm?

Would they need to find something new to fight against? (ref=Fight Club) Is it okey if they just live for Must See TV?

It's endless war vs Brave New World vs countless comic books. Well at least I have a journal for this crap.

Get down to the level of the rest
Where the people on the street
Put the metal to the test
--Shame of Life
--Butthole Surfers