Take it to the Matt
My boy and America’s sweetheart Matt Taibbi was on the Colbert Report the other night discussing the primaries. Matt’s the smartest voice in campaign coverage, and one of the funniest. View him with eyeballs!!I have also posted a thoughtful essay in my Touch of Ego section about a novel counter-propaganda campaign that anyone can participate in to help destroy the Bush legacy. Decontaminate your brain and read it!
Hi Jason,
I’ve been enjoying Beepo and Roadkill. I’m glad to see you working so hard to get me free entertainment. Boogee Bunneez was not doing it for me. Just want you to know that you are one of just two of the very many cartoonists I read who’s work I have actually purchased.
On the anti-war essay, you had me going along really well through your whole argument but then lost me on the punch. I don’t think it will be that easy to come up with an anti-war meme. I think first you have to come up with an anti-fear meme. The government and media have worked hard and well making people afraid and now fear is, I think, the main basis for the western culture, more so even than money and power, being that the reason most of us have for wanting money and power is so that maybe we won’t have to be so afraid.
I have a friend who, while he was in college held right wing views on capitalism, government etc. I told him that the only ones who would benefit from his way of thinking were the elite. He said that he was OK with that as he intended to be one of the elite.
The people of the world feel terror all around them. If it isn’t militant fanatics or neighbors of a hostile tribe, then it’s the government, the military, corporation lawyers and the police terrorizing us. Everyone wants a war on terror. They want to destroy terror, get it out of their lives. The thing is that terror only works if you are afraid of it and everyone is afraid.
At the basis of it all is the fact that the human species is terrorizing the entire planet simply by overpopulating it and wiping out the biosphere. We are in the midst of the Holocene extinction. Soon our species will surpass in destructive power the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs. There was only one extinction bigger than that in the history of the planet and we are on track to beat that one too in just the next one hundred years. Talk about terror.
Why are we afraid of a few exploding cars and planes flying into buildings when they world is ending?
It’s like that disney cartoon where Donald Duck destroys his house trying to kill a few flies. In the end the flies are doing fine and there are more of them than ever.
Thanks again for being so industrious with the web site. Sincerely Lawrence Petersen, Monterey, Ca
An anti-war meme IS an anti-fear meme. You must keep in mind that The primary root of fear is impotence, the sense that you can do nothing, or that your efforts are for naught.
Not everyone is afraid. As a matter of fact, I doubt a genuine fear of terrorism actually animates anyone in this country, except for the bobbleheads who make their living off of it. For the rest of us, the War on Terror is just status quo tedium. That’s why I ended it.