Radio Script.

Monday, September 20, 1999

I got back into town a few days ago. Unlike before, it seems like not too much is happening as far as radical politics these right at this moment.

I heard recently that Ted C, the unabomber, granted an interview to a fairly sleazy mainstream media outlet. It reminds me of many people today.

One weapon of the mainstream is to present you with a dialogue that they enforce and control but which they simultaneously offer you the chance to "tell your story."

This is the way in which the media and the justice system intersect. I think that actually, the cops have a powerful weapon just in people's isolation. When a cop asks to talk to a person, there can be a part of a person who says "ah, finally, I get a chance to tell that story which I have not had the chance to tell before." And that is how the police obtain confessions.

America is the nation where this kind of disorientation is very much maximized. Americans are taught to see themselves as atomized individuals, points of consciousness who make separate choices. At the maximum edge, this becomes schizophrenia. To preserve the sense that their consciousness is merely choices, a person's consciousness becomes separate from their body.

Insanity at various level is very common.

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I was at the Eugene Celebration over the weekend. It was pretty discouraging. It pretty well lacked any sense of celebration even compared to the other fairs I've been to.

The ticket price had raised to $8 from $3 a few years ago. This is similar to the way that restaurants have raised their base meal price to about $10 from $6 in the last few years around here. And this is in city that is by-no-means wealthy.

I can't really trace the full development of the class divide here. But it sure is here. From the Mall the restaurant on Oak and 5th streets, there's a hell of a divide.

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A lot of what I say could pretty well repeat things I've said in the past. That's OK. I hope with the title "Anti-news hour," I can dissect the whole idea of news.

An institution like the headline of a newspaper is a device that grabs your attention and gives you the impression that something is happening. And if you think about the organization of communication today, you'll notice that everything aims to grab attention, every communication means wants to put you into a state where some new thing is so important that you can forget about the over-all condition of life.

One key thing about language is that it requires people acting in order to have meaning. Simple things like chair or book might keep having about the same meaning over time. But a word road has had it's meaning change over time at the same time that roads we walk down have changed.

People use words to talk about their experiences.

In the world of today, a large part of people's activities involves fantasies about how life is organized. Most people have only a few choices about their life is run. You get a job, you get place to live, you buy a few products. But within this world, everything is pre-planned.

So essentially, what people have mostly is petty squabbles, fantasies of possible escape or fantasies of revenge against those who this society claims are responsible.

We are animals.

And even more, everything is organized by the logic of scarcity. 

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Any time that a person is subject to authority, to external power, it creates a division in that person. And usually, the person is not aware of the dualism. Either the person identifies fully with the authority and suppresses that spontaneous part or the person identifies with rebellion and identifies authority part with authority itself.

Many who have been brutalized by authority walk around trying to attack who are against authority. The obedient character identifies their misery with the break-down in respect for authority, even if that breakdown is fictitious. This is the origin of the fascist foot-soldier.

Other who rebel imagine authority as being responsible for their misery, they imagine that authority creates their condition when they themselves are responsible for internal state. They also tend to attack the injustice of authority rather than the basis of society.

I said earlier how people have little choice over the conditions of their lives. This is true but this situation is not the doing of the individual authority. The individual authority is simply a piece. While hateful, the individual authority is powerless. Cops have less choice about the condition's of today than the average person.

They can operate with a greater field to create misery but that is different. They can challenge this life much less than even us.

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This society is a prison of time and space.

Ecstasy is possible right-now but liberation requires collective action.

Do remember when you first found yourself falling in love? When you first felt a powerful and delicate friendship. Imagine feeling the electricity and those warm feelings all over again. You can even feel the anticipation of that first soft brush of possibilities as your spirits touch and it takes your breath away.

It is an experience that makes you move inside and you can even feel your toes curl in your shoes. You find yourself becoming unable to resist as you experience the smell and feel of that person next to you. As you look deeply into those eyes you find yourself unable to look away, it penetrates you and it makes you light. With that kind of connection you can't help feeling bound by a bond so strong that you are not able to keep that person off your mind. You want to surrender to that feeling. It is destiny. That feeling has always been with you and he is there inside you even when you are apart.

The idea fills you with a happiness that spreads through your existence. That picture and the deep warm soft sound of that voice repeats over and over in your mind.

Any friendship, any relationship, is like a living thing. It lives, grows, expands and dies.

We can begin that process today. The point is that once passion reaches a certain, it has to exapand beyond the bounds of just people sharing a moment - or die.