Magic, Mushroomed

As many of you know, I am not currently homeless. I am in a 52-unit DESC building very similar to the one DESC, the Downtown Emergency Service Center, is proposing to create in Rainier Valley, and it really ticks me off to hear that some residents out there think people like me wouldn’t make good enough neighbors. So I bet you think that I, director of Rant Central, will write about that.

Ha! Fooled you. No, I chose to take my blood pressure meds early this morning, and focus my thoughts on sweet things like baby bunnies, adult bunnies, pretty flowers, and dead Eyman-initiatives. And with my thoughts so cleansed and cheerified I chose to use the remainder of my space to cherish the magic.

I was inspired to do this when DESC workers delivered a brand new “Magic Chef” refrigerator to the woman that drew me to my housing, Anitra “Co-Conspirator” Freeman, and she said, “What’s magic about it? It’s not even energy-efficient! Doesn’t DESC know they’re wasting power and money by buying cheap energy-inefficient refrigerators?”

Poor, poor, jaded Anitra does not see the magic! Here she has a box that sucks invisible stuff out of the wall and turns it into coldness! You don’t have to feed it ice to keep the inside cold! In fact if you give it water it will turn it, magically, into ice!

There is so much magic in our lives. Our running water for example. We have a cold stream and a hot stream in our apartments! Right inside our apartments! Next to our toilets!

Thinking about these things made the weird neurons in my head (the ones in the back) zap my amygdala, or so it felt. I was motivated to ask, “What’s the most magical thing ever in all of our lives?”

The answer I gave myself was, “Volition.” I didn’t have to give myself that answer; I did it anyway, because I WANTED to. Isn’t that amazing?

People can make choices, then tell themselves -- tell their own dumb bodies -- to do what they decide, and their dumb bodies do it! Like magic! It goes on all the time every day, week after week, year after year!

I’ll give some examples. I’ll give you a second to contemplate baby bunnies before reading them.

Right. Lt. Ehren Watada became a Lieutenant of his own free will, by enlisting in the Army in 2003, by some accounts AFTER the Iraq War started. Now by his own free will he is ready to go to prison for refusing to join in that war. And he probably WILL go to prison! Volition: magic!

Here’s another example: The United States Senate consented overwhelmingly (89-2) to the UN Charter in the summer of 1945, making the UN Charter a part of US law. Since then there has been only sporadic and relatively insignificant popular protest of that action. So it can safely be said that the vast majority of the current populace of the US either agrees that the UN Charter should be US law, or is too apathetic to give a damn one way or another. Volition: magic!

Of course, that means that it is “our” choice, the freely-willed choice of this vast majority, that preemptive wars be illegal. Our government signed it in 1945, and we have since, as a people, freely consented to it! We’re enlisted! When does the warmaker go to prison? Volition: magic!

One more example. Pharmacists on the Washington State Pharmacy Board want to give pharmacists in the state the power to refuse lawfully prescribed medicines, when they feel like it, one at a time, just by referring patients to another pharmacist, who could also refer them to another, and another -- effectively depriving the patients of THEIR power to make the moral choice themselves, and violating the principle, “my body, my choice, you bastards.”

Yo, Pharmacists, you enlisted! If you don’t like the duty, you can will yourselves to resign. Volition: magic!

You're Thinking Too much

Remember Ian Spiers? He was the Scots-African-American who last year chose to take photographs of the beautiful Hiram Chittenden Locks in his neighborhood just like he’d seen all the tourists do for the decade or so since he’d been living nearby. Only Mr. Spiers wasn’t made to feel welcome. Instead he was greeted by police who demanded to see ID, not once but repeatedly. In one case federal agents even showed up at his home to lecture Mr. Spiers about 9-11 and to make him feel like a criminal.

Well, just when we thought all that was behind us, the U.S. Attorney’s Office issued a new warning last week that "it is crucial that police, fire and emergency medical personnel take notice of their surroundings, and be aware of 'vagrants' who seem out of place or unfamiliar." This warning was in part prompted by the discovery in Somerville, Massachusetts, of a homeless man with an expired Yemen passport, who was doing nothing illegal and who was not a terrorist.

Let me explain that again. I’m sure most of you out there have working neurons taking up valuable space in your heads, so that what I’ve said here so far may not have sunk in for you the way it would have done if your brain was made of chocolate pudding.

Pay close attention now. A MAN was found in OUR country guilty of NOT being a terrorist and of being ACTUALLY homeless and from Yemen, another country. This led OUR government to conclude that there might be other non-terrorists who are homeless and from Yemen, RIGHT?

NO! From that they concluded that we have to be more afraid of terrorists POSING as terrorists. We’ve already seen one person NOT DO THAT, in Somerville, so we must be more vigilant than ever.

You know, by concentrating really hard, and by taking lots of illegal pills and funny mushrooms, and drinking a whole bottle of Jack Daniels, I bet I could work for Homeland Security, too. Let me crank up my natural paranoia and see how that would work.

Seriously, I think I speak for everyone in the homeless community when I say the U.S. Attorney’s Office hasn’t gone far enough. We need to really be on the safe side and think of how else terrorists might effectively disguise themselves. Gee, if I were a terrorist I would want to be able to go anywhere I want and rarely be suspected of any wrongdoing, or, if suspected, be able to easily brush the suspicions aside.

I could pose as police, fire, or emergency medical personnel, couldn’t I? Yes! Our police should be on the alert for our other police! Our firemen should be suspicious of each other! We should run away from ambulance drivers; they may have bombs!

I know, a lot of you are probably saying, “Wes, you’re being silly. No ambulance driver has ever been found with a bomb in this country.” Precisely! The terrorists knew that’s what you were going to think and they’re using that! THEY’RE USING YOUR NEURONS, MAN.

It’s because you have a brain that they can get you. The terrorists do the opposite of everything that makes sense, and they use the sense that you make against you! (I want Dennis Hopper to play me in the movie version of this column.)

All the homeless people in this country are under suspicion all the time! That’s precisely why the terrorists will pretend to be homeless, because you won’t suspect the people you already suspected! Our government is full of geniuses. I know it because they came up with this.

What you’ve got to do is stop thinking. If you stop thinking the terrorists can’t get you. Our government destroys reason to protect us. We are better off when we do what they say and be stupid, because that’s the last thing the terrorists will expect from us.

Remember, 2+2=5. Non-thinking is Safe-thinking. Take your pills.

You Can't Say That!

It's a good time to recall the standard disclaimer: the author of this column, me, Dr. Wes Browning, is solely responsible for its content. Real Change, its management, staff, and volunteers have all said on many occasions that I, Dr. Wes, am nuts, and they assume no liability for anything I say here or anywhere else.

I had just finished saying, last week, that Susan Sontag was right about something and that Ed Koch may or may not have been. I also mentioned the Planters Nut Company. What you all may not have known, because I didn't tell you, was that last week's entire column was an attempt to write about Ward Churchill that got sidetracked.

Ward Churchill is the Colorado University professor who has taken a lot of flak for an essay he wrote after the 9-11 attacks in which he pointed out that the Pentagon was a military target and added that many (not all) of the people in the World Trade Towers at the time of the attack were willing participants in "America's global financial empire." One particular phrase that fetched Mr. Churchill a heap of heat was "little Eichmanns."

"Oh boy, talking about this will be fun!" That's what I've been thinking. I thought, "Let's talk about Nazi technocrats and the Americans who can be compared to them, ha, ha!" That's when I remembered what Susan Sontag said and got distracted.

Now Bill Maher has got back in the news and distracted me. Bill Maher said essentially the same thing that Sontag said, that the 9-11 attackers had not been cowards, whatever else they were, and got his show yanked from TV. Now he's back with a new TV show and he's getting himself in deep by disparaging evangelical Christians, and the conservative Christians are romping all over him.

OK, he said something real bad about Christians in general, and it was TOTALLY inappropriate. Christians do NOT all have neurological disorders. Bad talk-show man! BAD! No talk-show man cookie!

As if that isn't distracting enough, Chris Rock gets picked to host the Oscars and he lets fly that he thinks no straight black man would ever watch the Oscars and that, in general, awards for art are f-ing idiotic. You might think that would mostly offend gays, but actually right-wing conservatives are doing most of the complaining, with the same ones calling for his dismissal from the Oscars as are calling for Bill Maher's new show to be cancelled.

Just as I'm hearing about all this and I'm reassuring myself that everything is all right, we still have First Amendment protection of freedom of speech in this country, I find out that the House of Representatives passes a so-called Broadcast Decency Act which will give federal regulators power to levy massive fines against broadcasters for airing material they deem indecent.

Remember when conservatives used to oppose regulation of markets?

There I go again, digressing. Which as I see it is the continuing problem, and what's wrong with the whole picture.

Instead of having a serious national discussion about what Ward Churchill said, we are immersed in a war of words over whether he should be allowed to keep his job, having said that much. We are all forced to join the fight to keep the debate open rather than debating. Things like the Broadcast Decency Act only serve to prove that we are right to be concerned. Today they would fine CBS for an exposed breast; tomorrow it will be for a quote from Chris Rock (or even Alfred Kinsey); the next day it will be for "unpatriotic" speech.

All of which keeps all of us from talking about the extent to which Ward Churchill was right, and in all the confusion no one notes what the corporations that built the World Trade Towers do to the rest of the world in our names.