| Abstract | Uses irony to argue that American “freedom” is largely a system of control. It presents citizenship as a series of regulated choices—schooling, military service, wage labor, limited political options, and consumer dependence—enforced by police and law in the name of protection. The piece also attacks journalists, merchants, and other intermediaries for collaborating with authority while claiming to represent the public. Overall, it exposes the gap between official freedom and lived repression. |
| Full Text | A-Political Or, Criminal Or Victim Or Or Or Or Or Or Or
"And so, on the surface of daily life, consciousness forms beings and bodies that one can see gathering and colliding in the atmosphere, to distinguish their personalities. And these bodies form hideous cabals where every eventuality comes into the world to argue against what is beyond appeal. I am not Andre Breton and I did not go to Baltimore but this is what I saw on the banks of the Hudson."
You're born a citizen of a nation.
A citizen of a nation with rulers who legislate rules commanding you to be free.
Free to be conditioned in school until you're sixteen.
Free to be a compulsory soldier.
Free to pay sixty percent of your taxes to the military budget.
Free to get legally married.
Free to work for a minimum wage.
Free to vote when you're twenty-one.
Free to vote for the democratic or republican party of your choice.
Free to buy clothes, food, and property from the 200 corporations which account for 45% of the total U.S. manufacturing in 1966.
Free to obey arbitrary curfews.
Free to have your freedom regulated by officers who are your friends and who protect you.
PROTECT you from obscenity.
PROTECT you from loitering.
PROTECT you from nudity.
PROTECT you from sedition and subversion.
PROTECT you from marijauna, LSD, DURGS. [sic]
PROTECT you from gambling.
PROTECT you from homosexuality.
PROTECT you from statutory rape.
PROTECT you from common-law marriage.
PROTECT you from abortion.
PROTECT you from lonely you.
PROTECT you from demonstrations against your protectors.
So, don't worry about surface reality. Afterall, Terrance O'Flaherty in today's Chronicle, says you're the average fool on the street and have no right to speak for yourself. So trust society. Trust the specialists. And trust the merchants, especially the associates of the Psychedelic Shop, the Artists Liberation Front, and the I/Thou. They have a dialogue with the protectors, who cordially greeted you 8:15 Thursday night, for your own safety and their own private property. Police are your friends. But don't by all means, don't ask George Metevsky [sic] — his answer would be a medley of incoherent shouts of fury.
THE D I G G E R S . |
