NOLA TAZ

It is at times like this, when the focus is on disaster, that people show their true nature. At least that's what MLK said about the test of a man. Coming to grips with my partisan side, I recognize how best to antagonize the liberal nemesis: test his theories during times of duress.

I happened across a friend's blog and he mentioned, on his way to Burning Man, that doyenne of the diverse Hakim Bey. Bey's theory turns up at the oddest moments and from my perspective evoke little more than a romance for chaos. And so I quote from Bey wondering if Progressives here might be swayed by the highfalutin' theory as we observe what goes down in the town that drowned. To wit:

Uprising, or the Latin form insurrection, are words used by historians to label failed revolutions--movements which do not match the expected curve, the consensus-approved trajectory: revolution, reaction, betrayal, the founding of a stronger and even more oppressive State--the turning of the wheel, the return of history again and again to its highest form: jackboot on the face of humanity forever.

By failing to follow this curve, the up-rising suggests the possibility of a movement outside and beyond the Hegelian spiral of that "progress" which is secretly nothing more than a vicious circle. Surgo--rise up, surge. Insurgo--rise up, raise oneself up. A bootstrap operation. A goodbye to that wretched parody of the karmic round, historical revolutionary futility. The slogan "Revolution!" has mutated from tocsin to toxin, a malign pseudo-Gnostic fate-trap, a nightmare where no matter how we struggle we never escape that evil Aeon, that incubus the State, one State after another, every "heaven" ruled by yet one more evil angel.

If History IS "Time," as it claims to be, then the uprising is a moment that springs up and out of Time, violates the "law" of History. If the State IS History, as it claims to be, then the insurrection is the forbidden moment, an unforgivable denial of the dialectic--shimmying up the pole and out of the smokehole, a shaman's maneuver carried out at an "impossible angle" to the universe. History says the Revolution attains "permanence," or at least duration, while the uprising is "temporary." In this sense an uprising is like a "peak experience" as opposed to the standard of "ordinary" consciousness and experience. Like festivals, uprisings cannot happen every day--otherwise they would not be "nonordinary." But such moments of intensity give shape and meaning to the entirety of a life. The shaman returns--you can't stay up on the roof forever-- but things have changed, shifts and integrations have occurred--a difference is made.

Is there or is there not insurrection in New Orleans? Are people taking this opportunity to liberate themselves as the jackboot of the state is otherwise occupied? Will the prisoners released from jail to higher ground find an opportune moment to become what they have been denied from becoming? Is New Orleans a Temporary Autonomous Zone?

Or, are we just witnessing what happens to poor people who have but simple ambitions? Is everybody simply reduced to a lower form of survival and those not fit to achieve during normal days only depressed a bit further?

I think it is what it is. A city reduced to rubble and refugee status. There is no transcendence here, only human instinct and the spinning and framing of government assistance and media commentary. There is nothing special except that we Americans don't often look so closely at our neighbors. Everybody who wants to help, would help anyway. Everybody who wants to rob would be robbing sooner or later. Today, we're just getting a peak at ourselves naked. 24/7

It's not biblical. It's just a flood.

Comments

[cnulan]

There is nothing special except that we Americans don't often look so closely at our neighbors.

and that is precisely what is special in its uniquely debased and smugly unconscious way - the essence of Murkaness distilled to its abject, soul-less, nullity. Rather than look at itself, America is being hypnotized into distraction by an unrelenting look at its perennial conveniently scapegoatable others..,

oh, it's a mlk thing alright, but not the mlk thing you're referencing, that possibility doesn't exist in this country any longer. Rather, it's a Murkan mlk festival. now care to guess who the unwanted and previously unknown stepchildren are who're being sacrificed to the Murkan mlk?

Some kinda bread and circus gotta be consumed, because the masses are restive and heaven forbid they actually be called upon to pay constructive attention to their typically invisible neighbors. The expedient thing about typically invisible neighbors is just how expendible those muhfukkas are in a pinch.

So lets all stare in amazement as po black folks scavenge food and take other people's precious stuff, anything lest the attention of the herd wander over to ponder the substantive issues underscoring your boy G-Dub's fast emerging quagmire of a War on the Mississipi.....,

[cnulan]

why are people still so identified with ignominy of these otherwise invisible neighbors who've suddenly swung into view?

Because the media won't and can't stop talking about them - to themselves, to other people, and then the cackling herd in which the echo proliferates endlessly, mindlessly, and distractingly...,

as if any one of the monkey-entranced looky looers actually gave a single, solitary damn.

[Cobb]

Meanwhile:

New Orleans Councilman Oliver Thomas said he had been informed that there was "pandemonium" inside the Orleans Parish Prison on Broad Street and that prisoners had taken over the jail.

Thomas said he heard that about 1,500 prisoners were in the jail and that law enforcement officers had been unable to get in. He said about 30 guards were escorting 3,000 inmates away from the prison and that some prisoners have escaped.

Thomas said one of the reasons for widespread looting and violence was that most of the gun stores and gun shops in the city have been looted, putting a large number of weapons on the streets.

[cnulan]

Faced with an event of this magnitude, we naturally strive to make sense of what it all means (this striving is doubly strong if you keep a weblog). In this respect, I posit that the message is the medium...that the sheer drama of what we're witnessing is what is being communicated. In other words, I now suddenly find myself willing to admit, even in open conversation, that I definitively sense that what we are witnessing are the signs of the end of our era. And I no longer feel as though such talk is the equivalent of hanging a virtual sign-board around my neck that reads "Repent, for the End is Nigh!". In fact, I suspect that there are still more signs to come, and that they might even come more frequently than they already are.

The only thing that's confusing me is how very many people are not even remotely interested.

Maybe my signboard isn't big enough the comments to this post are the payoff...,

[cnulan]

ummm..., I very nearly forgot the truckload of crow somebody's gotta dress, store, and eat in soon to be $5.00/gallon socal..., a very oily reality indeed.

btw - has conservative wishful thinking re certain oily dualities collapsed into a focused, thermodynamic singularity yet?

[Temple3]

Time of the Bout... :35 seconds in the first. The winner by knockout - and STILL champ - CNU.

My advice...don't step in without a jab, an uppercut and some TIGHT defense - cause it's ovah!
Yo cobb...you crack me up man. I mean, some of your posts are straight up hilarious. This oil thing is gettin away from you though.

[Cobb]

I'm struggling mightily to expunge all thoughts of New Orleans from my head. It's making me ill.

As for oil. My deep hedge is the knowledge that I can do most everything in my career from where I sit.

Now, where is that Omega Man DVD? I need to brush up on Charleton Heston's Guide to Life in Apocalyptic Times.