"In the future only those who are members of a chamber are allowed to be productive in our cultural life.  Membership is open only to those who fulfill the entrance condition.  In this way all unwanted and damaging elements have been excluded."  Joseph Goebbels

Do you have a control freak in your life?  Someone who is apparently entirely incapable of not smearing peanut butter on your windshield?  Someone who seems, unbelievably, to actually revel in rubbing your nose in their dumb, joyless "power?"  How much fun can it possibly not be, to piss on other people's Corn Flakes?  What kind of kicks, really, can be had by smashing the painted eggshells of people who are trying to laugh and reason with you?  What kind of demons deform a man until his spine is flattened like a rigid board of pure, 2-dimensional control?  How can thoughts and words and minds be twisted in a way that threatens to actually prove the existence of the mongoloid homunculus, the blind, writhing half-man in the primordial death-pool, bathing like an ass in the bed of lava and loathing from which all demons spring?

I dunno, but whatever it is, it's incomprehensible.  Completely unbelievable, all of it:  the cowardice, the denial, the thickness of mind, the wooden, thudding density of spirit, the the actual expenditure of time and energy in the act of controlling (or attempting to control) other people, of denying other people their validity, their due, their right.  The unwillingness to even consider the possibility that these are all mortal, stupid mistakes.  "It strains credulity, at that," to quote Geoffrey Rush in one of the few scenes from the entire Pirates franchise I've ever seen (great line).  It has never been said better than in this poem.  It's a short poem, but the thumbnail says it all.  Hatred.  Their finest art, indeed:

Is this the beginning of a political discussion?  Is this just another grain of idiot sand on a vast, apparently endless beach of smug, myopic finger-pointing and self-righteous grandstanding?  It's not an unreasonable assumption these days, but... NO.  I don't bother with those discussions anymore, most of the time.  People have drawn their lines in the dung-mud, and aren't likely to recant anytime soon.  I have my opinions and preferences (which tend toward the Constitutional, live-and-let-live, free-range individual variety), but unlike many people today, I don't think my opinions and preferences are valid in the Idiot New World that has been created around all of us, completely irrespective of our nationality, religion, or race.  I'm not writing this article on an Etch-a-Sketch, and I'm not pinning my hopes on another psy-op, or arguing with people who are proud to be members of a MENTAL INSTITUTION while bragging and/or whining about their idiotic, would-be choices.  Is it cowardice to separate oneself from the herd of dying, self-appointed swine of the times?  Or is it clarity and foresight, maybe even wisdom?  

It's the latter, I believe and truly hope.

So, what is to be done?  Is there a cure for this madness of control, a defense against the power-tripping little men who dominate the world with their thuggish behavior on the job, or in the humor-crucifying courtroom of their dead and dying daily lives?  Is there an escape hatch, a portal through which it is possible to evade contact with people who treat the world like a legalistic strip club?  Wicked little half-men who never look you in the eye, but who wear symbolic trenchcoats on the subway, so as to more easily expose the unsuspecting public to their compensatory sports cars?

Is there a salve?  A substance?  A cure?

Something to get me through?

Maybe, maybe not.  At the moment, however, I am trying really hard to embrace Jesus and surrealism.

Jesus is the hard part, and I will wait until I am qualified, before I comment any further.  

Surrealism is the tonic.  Ghosts Before Breakfast is a surrealist German film made by Hans Richter in the late 1920s, long before the Nazi cancer became terminal and destroyed the nation.  It depicts a surreal "rebellion of the objects," in which common household items such as hats, ducks, and revolvers behave in ways that are anathema to reason and utility.  A necktie slips free from the inverse noose of its owner's neck, beards come and go as they are stroked, and targeted people's heads become detached and dance inside the crosshairs, as if to mock the would-be sniper.  Oh, so you want to shoot me do you.  Ha!  I can take my head off as I please!  The text at the beginning of the film reads, "The Nazis destroyed the sound version of this film as 'degenerate art.'  It shows that even objects revolt against regimentation."  

Even objects revolt against regimentation?

That's a relief.

But..... what if those objects are people?  

Do objectified people revolt against regimentation like their Dadaist counterparts?

Have the Nazis been reanimated in a Chinese lab?  Did The Boys From Brazil finally grow up, and meet?  Are they sitting around in North Korea reading Nietzsche?  Are they the proprietors of a successful laundromat in Kiev?  Have they cracked the final comic-book launch code of their souls?  Have they turned the existential corner, twisted the nuclear key?  Have they lowered the standards of the entire world, while raising themselves up like Satan to godhood?

How are they going to persecute "degenerate art" like Ghosts Before Breakfast, while elevating degeneracy?

If there is a ghost inside my pancakes, does that make my pancakes a machine?

Who will the ghosts before breakfast be, in a society of thug-nuts?

You perhaps, and maybe me.

If it gets rough though, dig on Proverbs 1.  Decide for yourself if sharing it with your particular pigs is a case of "pearls before swine," but don't hesitate because they might reject or laugh at you.  If you have any brains or self-respect, someone is already rejecting and laughing at you anyway.  Somebody close.  A friend, a clown, an institutionalized social-engineering project who has sold their soul for an unearned, paradoxical sense of masochistic superiority.... someone.  As Nick Cave sings in his song "Hollywood," "everybody's losing someone."  

Everybody's losing someone.  "Indeed," says the entire world excluding no one, with a tone of jaded snark intended to express concurrence with the undeniable sentiment.

Everybody's losing someone.

Hope to God it's not ourselves.  Not like those other people, those biology experiments on the other side of the dung line, whom I have been engineered and programmed to destroy.  It's really great being better than other people.  It's almost as much fun as digging your own grave, or throwing yourself into a ravine of jagged rocks.

Does God really hate flags?  Or has He simply turned His back on those who have turned their back on Him?  Shall I align myself with a culture whose finest art is hatred?  Will I cling to Jesus in the storm?  Or is my faith an ATM machine?

I shudder at the thought, either way.

Thanks for listening.

Proverbs 1

24 Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded;

25 But ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof:

26 I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh;

27 When your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you.

28 Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me:

29 For that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord:

30 They would none of my counsel: they despised all my reproof.

31 Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices.

32 For the turning away of the simple shall slay them, and the prosperity of fools shall destroy them.

33 But whoso hearkeneth unto me shall dwell safely, and shall be quiet from fear of evil.