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MICHAEL MOORE, as you might imagine, has un-gentle words for the president:
” There is virtually NO ONE in America (talk radio nutters and Fox News aside) who is gung-ho to go to war. Trust me on this one. Walk out of the White House and on to any street in America and try to find five people who are PASSIONATE about wanting to kill Iraqis. YOU WON’T FIND THEM!”
SOME MORE ANTIWAR SITES to peruse:
…toward the most grandiosely stupid single action taken by a first-world nation in my lifetime. I feel like getting smashed, so I’ll probably send myself instead to a no-booze recreation joint (perhaps the go-kart place in Georgetown or the Family Fun Center in Tukwila).
Or I might peruse some of my favorite antiwar websites, such as Boondocks Net (not officially connected to the Boondocks comic strip). It’s got many intriguing essays and features about past wars (particularly the Phillipine-American War), early political cartoons, and peace and justice movements past and present. My favorite pieces on the site include one about Mark Twain’s scathing satirical story The War Prayer and William Dean Howells’s more somber 1905 home-front tale Editha.
There’ll natch be another antiwar rally today, at the Federal Building at 5. Details are at NotInOurNameSeattle.net.
Other antiwar sites with vital stuff on them include:
In punditry you might not have seen on the bigger news sites, the former “most trusted man in America” Walter Cronkite sez a war would not only permanently endanger international relations but could put the U.S. economy into chaos.
And our ol’ fave Molly Ivins asks, “Have you ever seen such amazing arrogance wedded to such awesome incompetence?”
Those nude protests you might have read about can be viewed at Baring Witness, which also provides instructions on staging your own big PEACE bodyscape. Individual ladies n’ gents had been sending self-portraits with body-paint messages to an Australian site called Nude for Peace, but that site has apparently been blacklisted by its server provider.
HERE ARE SOME IMAGES of the most recent prewar, antiwar action.
“Hands Across Green Lake” didn’t actually span the entire 3.2-mile circumference of the lake. But hundreds crowded around the Aurora Avenue side of the lake, waving at honking supportive motorists and making one last stand, one last silent shout of hope that the abyss can be avoided.
…a little further on the addictive quest for what my previous post referred to as “abstract power,” the destructive madness that’s fueling our governmental elite during its current drive toward doom.
Some of you who lived through the Watergate era remember the “Blind Ambition,” as Nixon aide John Dean described the White House mindset of the time.
Look at the number of un-reconstructed Nixonians back in the White House now, imagine three decades’ worth of stewing grudges and revenge fantasies.
Next, consider the “Reality Distortion Field.”
That’s the late-’80s-coined phrase with which Apple Computer cofounder Steve Jobs was accused of being selectively unaware of business conditions that didn’t fit what he chose to believe. The lieutenants and yes-men who surrounded Jobs, according to this theory, held such personal loyalty to their boss that they came to share his delusions?and to feed them back to him, by giving him highly edited market data and highly weighted interpretations of that data.
Finally, we have the example of Big Bucks: The Press Your Luck Scandal.
This documentary, currently airing on the Game Show Network, tells the tragic life story of Michael Larson, an unemployed ice-cream truck driver from Ohio with three kids by three different mothers, a man obsessed with finding the perfect get-rich-quick scheme that would set him up for life. He spent his jobless days watching the four or five TV sets he’d stacked in his tiny apartment. He watched the now-classic Press Your Luck until he realized the show’s big game board wasn’t really random, that he could predict the order of its blinking lights and stop it on any prize square he wanted. He got to LA, somehow got through the contestant-casting process, and legally took the network for over $100,000. He then promptly lost it all between a shady real-estate deal and a burglary at his home (yes, he’d kept thousands in small bills lying around the apartment!).
Anyhoo, during the documentary a staff member on the old show recalls seeing a steely, emotionless stare in Larson’s eyes. The staffer says he saw the same look years later, when his teenage son started getting hooked on video games. It’s the “in the zone” stare one gets when one has become one with the game. Total zen-like concentration on making the right moves in the right sequence, and on the power-rush rewards for success. Total obliviousness to everything that is neither the screen nor the control console.
This country, my loyal readers, is being run by people who try to run government, and war, as one big video game. The chickenhawks don’t want to fight. They never wanted to fight. They just want to manipulate the joysticks of power by all means available, including by the means of making other people fight for them, whilst they remain in their posh office suites and luxurious homes bossing everybody around.
I could give a fourth metaphor here, but you already know about the hubris and comeuppance of those ol’ dot-com bosses.
This is written on Sunday, March 16. The day before the Irish Catholic Church’s sanitized substitute for the ol’ pagan spring equinox fertility rites. A time to honor nature’s cycle of renewal; the hope that comes from new life; and the libidinous, procreative spirit that makes it all possible.
But instead the world sits and waits for all hell to break loose, for wanton death and destruction to rain from the sky onto a small country already suffering under a brutal dictatorial regime, now to be decimated by the agents of another brutal dictatorial regime.
No, all you masculinity-bashers out there in alternative-land, this is not a war about penises or testosterone. It’s almost the complete opposite of that. Both the Iraqi and U.S. war regimes are fueled by an anti-erotic passion, an ultimately nerdy-geeky quest for abstract power. The U.S. neoconservatives are particularly addicted to this internalized, repressed, retro-pre-pubescent, anti-sex, anti-life state of mind.
This state of mind can be seen among censors who would outlaw images of sex but who don’t mind images of violence. It can be seen in a government that promotes abstinence-only “education” in the public schools, but refuses to decently fund basic education in these same schools. It can be seen in a national health care “policy” aimed solely at enriching the drug and insurance CEOs. Indeed, it can be seen throughout a federal Executive Branch whose every large and small decision is predicated upon rewarding big campaign contributors and/or silencing dissent.
A Guerrilla Girls ad in the Village Voice suggested sending estrogen pills to government officials, imagining that would immediately make them start seeing everything correctly. I suspect it would only turn them from sanctimonious, repressed men into sanctimonious, repressed women-in-men’s-bodies.
No, we need more passionately female females on the side of peace. And we need more passionately male males. (And, of course, more passionately queer queers, etc.)
In the eternal Dionysian spirit of life, we need to actively be out in the world with an intense, dedicated love. We need to sow the seeds of peace, to cultivate the fruits of true democracy. We need to do our share of initiating consensual, cooperative interaction here and abroad. We need to plow, thrust, pull, push, kneel, gaze, lick, caress, rub, nibble, sniff, and do whatever else it takes to help bring the planet out of its current frustration and toward greater serenity and satisfaction.
Or, to be Irish about it, to help the world become as ecstatic as the end of Ulysses.
NEWSWEEK VET ARNAUD DE BORCHGRAVE recently gave a long speech to the Foreign Press Association on the messier-every-day mess the right wing sleaze machine has gotten us into, entitled “Clash of Civilizations or New World Disorder?” Some highlights:
“All I can say with a reasonable degree of certainty is that the world today is a lot safer than it will be in 10 years from now, as the forces of nationalism, fundamentalism, globalism, and increasingly transnationalism sort themselves out. The new nexus that I can see at my work at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)—where I direct a program about transnational threats—is an emerging link between fanaticism, religion, and science….”Somebody, somewhere today is planning a post-capital world. I see some of the Phd dissertations being written all the way from Singapore to Spain following the scandals we had recently and still have on Wall Street. If present trends continue with democratic governance dominated by political leaders whose main concern is how to get themselves re-elected, then I’m afraid that democracy and the public good may be deemed incompatible, as indeed they were in Europe in the 1920’s and 1930’s. “I don’t think it takes rocket science to figure out how much damage was done to the United States – the citadel of capitalism – by the age of gluttony on Wall Street. These crypto-capitalists saboteurs, as I call them in a column are the fodder that feeds transnational progressivism, which is a new ideology rooted in the NGOs…. “Last fall, Hewlett Packard received a patent for a new computer of breakthrough technology that will enable them to manufacture a computer smaller than a spec of dust. There is already a cell telephone so small that it can be planted in a tooth. So the technology revolution is bound to be an integral part of whatever emerges, as invisible molecular structures embedded in conventional chips will be worn, ingested, or implanted. Imagine entire chemical labs the size of a computer chip. Technology is neutral, but one can easily imagine that the forces of evil will harness it to their objectives…. “[Washington] has become a bilingual city where truth is the second language… “Are the networks in favor of war for ideological reasons or because ratings go up? I would tend to agree with the latter. They want a war. I am convinced of that.”
“All I can say with a reasonable degree of certainty is that the
world today is a lot safer than it will be in 10 years from now, as the
forces of nationalism, fundamentalism, globalism, and increasingly
transnationalism sort themselves out. The new nexus that I can see at my work at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)—where I direct a program about transnational threats—is an emerging link between fanaticism, religion, and science….”Somebody, somewhere today is planning a post-capital world. I see some of the Phd dissertations being written all the way from Singapore to Spain following the scandals we had recently and still have on Wall Street. If present trends continue with democratic governance dominated by political leaders whose main concern is how to get themselves re-elected, then I’m afraid that democracy and the public good may be deemed incompatible, as indeed they were in Europe in the 1920’s and 1930’s.
“I don’t think it takes rocket science to figure out how much damage was done to the United States – the citadel of capitalism – by the age of gluttony on Wall Street. These crypto-capitalists saboteurs, as I call them in a column are the fodder that feeds transnational progressivism, which is a new ideology rooted in the NGOs….
“Last fall, Hewlett Packard received a patent for a new computer of
breakthrough technology that will enable them to manufacture a computer
smaller than a spec of dust. There is already a cell telephone so small that
it can be planted in a tooth. So the technology revolution is bound to be an
integral part of whatever emerges, as invisible molecular structures
embedded in conventional chips will be worn, ingested, or implanted. Imagine entire chemical labs the size of a computer chip. Technology is neutral, but one can easily imagine that the forces of evil will harness it to their objectives….
“[Washington] has become a bilingual city where truth is the second language…
“Are the networks in favor of war for ideological reasons or because ratings go up? I would tend to agree with the latter. They want a war. I am convinced of that.”
…here again is the big news about our big art show opening this Thursday:
City Light, City Dark has been moved to the Nico Gallery, 619 Western Avenue, Second Floor (one floor lower than the previously advertised location, in the same building). It still opens next Thursday evening, March 6, 6-8 p.m.
The exhibit features grouped pairs of images depicting similar subjects. One photo in each pair is set in the tourists’ Seattle of sunny days and mellow smiles. The other photo takes place in the “other” Seattle of low overcasts, long nights, and defiant nightlife.
Be there. Aloha.
A FASHION DESIGNER of my acquaintance recently told me she thought antiwar protestors ought to dress up more smartly. She believes if you’re trying to persuade outsiders to your cause, you should be dressed to impress. Make a visual statement of your intelligence, dedication, and awareness. Nix-nix on the ragged jeans and stringy facial hair; oui-oui to happy, harmonious looks that say you demand a happier, more harmonious world.
This student, at a student-oriented antiwar protest Wednesday at Westlake Park, has the idea.
So, in her own silver-and-red way, does this young speaker.
The protest gathered young women and men from grade school to grad school and beyond, from throughout the metro area. They were informed; they were impassioned. They’d rather not have their own asses potentially put on the line for the benefit of a few billionaires, thank you.
This particular protestor really dressed up. The plaque reads, in part:
1 ring =
100 Iraqi children killed by
US bombs since 1991
Duration: one every second
for 100 minutes
IF YOU LIKE THE PHOTOS on my site, you should come to my art show (see above.) You’re also bound to love another Seattle photojournalism site, Buffonery. Despite the silly name, it’s a very accomplished site with gorgeous local architectural photography. It’s all done by Manuel Wanskasmith, a 22-year-old UW sociology grad, and it’s all fab.
UPDATE TO A LONG-AGO ITEM: A year and a half or so after we discussed the end of what had been my favorite Net-radio operation, Luxuria Music is back on line. Sort of.
Clear Channel Communications, the 8000-lb. gorilla of the broadcast radio biz, bought and promptly killed Luxuria, which played a sprightly mix of lounge, swing, space-age-bachelor-pad, and ’60s pop tuneage. One longstanding fan of the station later bought the domain name, and finally has a music stream online again.
The new Luxuria plays much the same sorts of cool stuff the old Luxuria played. But its post-dotcom–crash startup budget doesn’t allow for live DJs (a vital part of the old Lux mix). And its third-party server software has some stringent requirements (a Mac user such as myself can only access it via MS Internet Exploder) and seems to cut itself off, and crash your browser, after a half hour or so.
Still, it’s a start, or rather a re-start, for the kind of programming creativity you not only can’t get on commercial broadcast radio but you also can’t get on those highly-formatted commercial online, cable, and satellite music services.
FOR THE SECOND CONSECUTIVE YEAR, Pioneer Square was essentially declared an official No Fun Zone by city officials. Police permitted would-be revelers to enter and leave the three-block bar strip on First Avenue South, but not to linger on sidewalks or to make spectacles of themselves.
The above shot is the only “crowd” picture I could get. It was a close-up of the tiny stretch of sidewalk from the J&M to Larry’s Greenfront. Many PioSq bars were closed altogether; those that opened had little more than their regular lineup of “blooze” bands.
The “mandatory mellowness” attitude of the Seattle civic establishment never cared for rock n’ roll nor for festiveness. The 2001 Mardi Gras, a spontaneous and unplanned street party that begat several drunken fights and a fatal beating, only affirmed the anti-fun resolve. It will be up to We The People to take back the streets for revelry as well as for political speech. But it’d have to be thru an event that’s just organized enough as to prevent/discourage violence.
As I said after the ’01 debacle: Plan it, don’t ban it.
I DON’T ALWAYS AGREE with web-pundit Sam Smith. (A self-identified “progressive” who felt betrayed by Bill Clinton’s conservatism-lite, Smith fell too easily for some of the impeachment gang’s worst allegations.) But he’s just posted a very lucid li’l piece about what the peace movement needs to do next. (Scroll to the second item down on the linked page.)
IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN offers a different theory behind the warmongering. He suspects it’s not for oil nor for “liberation,” but plain ol’ warmongering for warmongering’s sake:
“The hawks… believe that the world position of the United States has been steadily declining since at least the Vietnam War. They believe that the basic explanation for this decline is the fact that U.S. governments have been weak and vacillating in their world policies. (They believe this is even true of the Reagan administration, although they do not dare to say this aloud.) They see a remedy, a simple remedy. The U.S. must assert itself forcefully and demonstrate its iron will and its overwhelming military superiority. Once that is done, the rest of the world will recognize and accept U.S. primacy in everything. The Europeans will fall into line. The potential nuclear powers will abandon their projects. The U.S. dollar will once again rise supreme. The Islamic fundamentalists will fade away or be crushed. And we shall enter into a new era of prosperity and high profit. “We need to understand that they really believe all of this, and with a great sense of certitude and determination. That is why all the public debate, worldwide, about the wisdom of launching a war has been falling on deaf ears. They are deaf because they are absolutely sure that everyone else is wrong, and furthermore that shortly everyone else will realize that they have been wrong. “It is important to note one further element in the self-confidence of the hawks. They believe that a swift and relatively easy military victory is at hand – a war of weeks, not of months and certainly not of still longer. The fact that virtually all the prominent retired generals in the U.S. and the U.K. have publicly stated their doubts on this military assessment is simply ignored. The hawks (almost all civilians) do not even bother to answer them.”
“The hawks… believe that the world position of the United States has been steadily declining since at least the Vietnam War. They believe that the basic explanation for this decline is the fact that U.S. governments have been weak and vacillating in their world policies. (They believe this is even true of the Reagan administration, although they do not dare to say this aloud.) They see a remedy, a simple remedy. The U.S. must assert itself forcefully and demonstrate its iron will and its overwhelming military superiority. Once that is done, the rest of the world will recognize and accept U.S. primacy in everything. The Europeans will fall into line. The potential nuclear powers will abandon their projects. The U.S. dollar will once again rise supreme. The Islamic fundamentalists will fade away or be crushed. And we shall enter into a new era of prosperity and high profit.
“We need to understand that they really believe all of this, and with a great sense of certitude and determination. That is why all the public debate, worldwide, about the wisdom of launching a war has been falling on deaf ears. They are deaf because they are absolutely sure that everyone else is wrong, and furthermore that shortly everyone else will realize that they have been wrong.
“It is important to note one further element in the self-confidence of the hawks. They believe that a swift and relatively easy military victory is at hand – a war of weeks, not of months and certainly not of still longer. The fact that virtually all the prominent retired generals in the U.S. and the U.K. have publicly stated their doubts on this military assessment is simply ignored. The hawks (almost all civilians) do not even bother to answer them.”
It just so happened that the big rally starting off Saturday’s peace march took place outside Fisher Pavilion (where the Flag Plaza used to be). Inside the pavilion was Festival Sundiata, an annual African American crafts and culture fair. That was the reason Philly’s Best, the black-owned cheesesteak house at 23rd & Union, brought its mobile van there that day.
Its delectable sandwiches happened to be the perfect peace-march meal—hearty, flavorful, made with person-to-person care by an independent business, and named for the birthplace of modern democracy.
The march attracted at least 30,000 people and possibly many more. The police kept to themselves. The marchers were remarkably upbeat. There was such a vibe of togetherness and optimism, one wishes the march had led to a closing rally-party in a park rather than merely to a dispersal point in front of the INS jailhouse.
The question remains: Did anybody in power pay attention to the thousands marching here, and the millions marching worldwide?
We can be reasonably certain the Bush goon squad has privately pooh-poohed all the protests as the impotent work of a few scattered ’60s relics who refuse to get with the proverbial program. The professional bigots on hate-talk radio and the Fox Fiction Channel are assuredly poring over their theasauri this afternoon, devising newer and meaner epithets to hurl against anybody who dares to question instead of obey.
But Saturday’s events prove more and more of us refuse to be cowed by the fearmongers.
We can stand up and resist. We can answer deliberate fear with compassionate love.
Even if the near-right Democrats are afraid to come along, we can let them know it’s in their best electoral interest to listen to us.
We can encourage individual Republican politicians to break off from the hate machine if they’re ever going to win another “swing district” election.
We close today with a line from the ineptly directed, but politically prescient, Attack of the Clones:
“The day we stop believing democracy can work is the day we lose it.”
…getting up from comfortable nihilism and going to the big marches today, here’s some encouragement-of-sorts from Robert Byrd, one of the few US Senators who currently dares to show a backbone:
“To engage in war is always to pick a wild card. And war must always be a last resort, not a first choice. I truly must question the judgment of any President who can say that a massive unprovoked military attack on a nation which is over 50% children is “in the highest moral traditions of our country”. This war is not necessary at this time. Pressure appears to be having a good result in Iraq. Our mistake was to put ourselves in a corner so quickly. Our challenge is to now find a graceful way out of a box of our own making. Perhaps there is still a way if we allow more time.”
“To engage in war is always to pick a wild card. And war must always be a
last resort, not a first choice. I truly must question the judgment of any
President who can say that a massive unprovoked military attack on a nation
which is over 50% children is “in the highest moral traditions of our
country”. This war is not necessary at this time. Pressure appears to be
having a good result in Iraq. Our mistake was to put ourselves in a corner
so quickly. Our challenge is to now find a graceful way out of a box of our
own making. Perhaps there is still a way if we allow more time.”
AN EDITORIAL in the NYC suburban paper Newsday offers some serious, detailed, far more viable options to an Iraq war—if the right-wingers have any actual goals other than going to war under whatever excuse is at hand.
…should be at most subscribers’ postal receptacles in the next few days. If it isn’t, lemme know.
It’s also at Confounded Books (Belltown), J&S (formerly Steve’s) Broadway News (Broaday, natch), and M Coy Books (downtown). Further outlets should be online within the week.
THE ANTIWAR MOMENTUM keeps a-buildin’. The next big local event is on 2/15 (the Ides of February) at Westlake. Info’s at www.feb15.org.
Amid the ongoing ickiness of war and rumors of war, Shuttle Explosion II came along to remind us that American techno-might does not equal invincibility; that Americans can needlessly die horrific deaths at the hands of their own government’s wrong decisions (such as NASA’s chronic corner-cutting), with no overseas enemies involved.
If the deaths of these six Americans (one of whom was born in India) and one Israeli have any meaning at all, it will be to help dissuade a few more citizens from blind faith in their government and its promises.
WHILE MUCH OF THE NATION was being reminded about the frailty of technology, I spent the weekend (when I wasn’t moving the print MISC into stores) being reminded about the eternal strength of the plain ol’ human body, at the Seattle Erotic Arts Festival at Town Hall (a former Christian Science church). There’ve been countless erotic-art group exhibitions in town before, but never this big or this well-publicized.
The Friday-night opening and auction left over 150 people lined up outside waiting for the chance to enter the filled-to-capacity auditorium. Once inside, many patrons removed jackets to reveal the requested “provocative” attire. (Signs were posted at all doors leading to other parts of the building, announcing “CLOTHING REQUIRED Beyond This Point.”)
There were guys in leather chaps or Utilikilts or puffy pirate shirts. There were ladies in thong bikinis with body paint, or thongs and burlesque pasties beneath see-thru dresses, or vinyl hot pants and ’70s-esque knit halter tops. There were lots of corsets and other cleavage enhancers. The wearers of these costumes (some of whom were older and/or wider than the standard “model material”) all glowed with the pride of being admired, being desired.
There was a glorious vibe in the air of joyous celebration, of taking a vacation from winter blahs and sharing a form of instant intimacy with several hundred other adults. Unlike much of the “sex industry” (porn, strip clubs, advice manuals, etc.), there was no mercenary hard-sell attitude; not among the viewers and exhibitors and not even in most of the art.
There were 80 or so artworks on auction night, and over 200 artworks in the subsequent weekend exhibit. (About half the auction pieces were also on display the following two days.)
The artworks themselves encompassed most of the popular visual-art media. There were photos, paintings, drawings, cartoons, sculptures, and collages, in all sizes and shapes.
The subject matter of the works hewed close to a rather narrow variety of scenes, rather than the full possibilities of erotic expression.
There were many solo “figure studies” of women and men of assorted adult ages, nude or in fetish garb.
There were many bondage scenes, of a woman or man either tied up alone or being disciplined by an always-female dominant.
There were scenes of kissing and/or groping among lesbian, gay-male, and even a few hetero couples.
There were two or three scenes of fellatio, but none of cunnilingus.
There were no scenes of what used to be called “the sex act,” hetero intercourse. (One of the event’s organizers told me no such scenes were submitted.) The only penetrative sex shown was in a large painting of a gay orgy. (Once again, I thought, the Seattle art world’s reverse double standards were more open to gay-male sexuality than to straight-male sexuality.)
My first thought about the prevelance bondage art: “It’s just so 1998.” Some of the S/M scenes depicted the attitude of aggressive egomania that helped make the dot-com era so annoying. Others seemed intended to be “shock art,” as if we were still living in an era before there were adult novelty stores in half the nation’s strip malls.
But others recognized a more playful spirit to role-playing. Although the exhibition’s contributing artists come from all over North America, I pondered whether I was seeing the birth of a particularly Nor’Western flavor of erotica, and what that could be.
I decided it would be an erotica based on playfulness, closeness, and comfort. Instead of the “are we being transgressive yet?” bombast found in much NY/Calif. “alternative” sex art, or the artsy pretensions found in much Euro sex art, NW sex art would acknowledge that people have been having sex since before we were born, and having all assorted types of sex to boot. Het, lesbian, gay, bi, transgender, pain/pleasure, monogamous, nonmonogamous, multi-partner, solo, etc. etc.—none of it’s outré, all of it’s fun for those who’re into it. It’s all about connecting with other bodies and souls, keeping warm and passionate during the dreary winter days, being creative and positive, gentle and brash.
Sidebar: Before the exhibition, I’d seen the video Sex Across America #8: Seattle. It’s part of a series in which some hard-porn performers and their camera crew travel to different cities. This one featured hotel-room sex scenes taped in the (unnamed but obvious) Seattle Sheraton, Edgewater, and Inn at the Market, plus a billiards bar I’m sure I’ve been to under other circumstances; as well as clothed tourist scenes at the Space Needle, the Pike Place Market, and around Fourth and Pike.
While merely location-shot here by LA porn-biz people, the sex is a lot closer to personalized lovemaking than to most of the emotionless hot-action usually found in LA corporate porn. Especially in the final scene, with a real-life local couple (who’d previously appeared in an “amateur” sex video for the same director). Prior to showing off their well-practiced lovin’ technique, the couple’s female half is interviewed by the director: “So I hear the women in Seattle are really horny,” he says. The woman smiles back, “Yes! It’s all the moisture.” It’s a cute, charming prelude to some cute, charming nooky.
So there can indeed be a Northwestern eroticism. Another, more vital question: Can eroticism save the world, as has been pondered on this site and elsewhere?
The answer, like so much involving sex, is complicated.
The wide-open decadence of Berlin and Paris in the ’30s didn’t prevent the Nazis. Indeed, these scenes were among the Nazis’ first targets.
The ’60s hedonism didn’t do much to stop the Vietnam war or prevent the rise of Nixon’s gang.
The ’70s cult of individual pleasure merely foreshadowed the upscale “lifestyle” fetish of more recent times.
But a strong, supportive gay community, built largely around sexual enjoyment (and around demanding the right to it) is the dominant reason new AIDS infections have been stemmed in urban North America.
And today’s most pressing social problems all have sensually-based potential solutions.
Both fundamentalist Islam and fundamentalist Christianity seek to repress sex, as part of authoritarian ideologies encouraging obedience and disconnectedness.
Today’s war fever is profoundly anti-sexual, promoting cold ruthless ambition at the expense of almost everything to do with freedom or compassion.
Our contracting economy keeps most of us shackled and frustrated, while rewarding a tiny elite of whip-lashing doms.
The suburban landscape is a wasteland of beauty-deprived arterial roads and subdivisions keeping people apart and isolated.
Sex and erotica, by themselves, won’t solve any of these. A consumerist, self-centered definition of sex could even help these problems get worse.
But it’d sure help if more people used sensuality as a way to become more aware of the world around them, and if more people used sexual intimacy and to learn how to empathically bond with people, to help bring back a sense of community.
And, of course, sex is always a good way to advertise a progressive movement. Spread the joy, share the (consensual) love, propose a world of more satisfying possibilities, and have tons-O-fun doing it.
Come out of the shadows and into the warm pink light.
…asking men to put the fullness of their yangness to work for a better world: Maggie Tapert, a US-born sex therapist now based in Zurich, offers a pro-peace essay, Prescription Pleasure. In it, she speaks out in favor of sexual self-empowerment for women as an antidote to a culture of violence and repression. But (unlike many of her colleagues in the “sex positive” movement) she also prescribes a similar path for men:
“Imagine for a moment that you could sit on the market place lovingly stroking a beautiful hard cock and all the men and women who walked by would admire it, or maybe lovingly stroke or touch it, sprinkle it with holy water or even just smile, nod and go on about their business. Imagine what a different world this would be. If your potent hard member were honored and encouraged by your community perhaps there would be no need for violence. If we loved your cock maybe we would see the end of war. Maybe. Who knows.”
Later, of course, she admits she’s not really advocating street nudity; she just wants to provoke her readers into imagining a world where pleasure was treasured, and to create such a world within themselves.
