How I lerned 2 luv Amerika
by roshen abraham


Everyone seems to be confused in the wake of Wednesday's events, so I thought I'd offer several different perspectives which you can pick and choose from:


The We Can Resist Perspective

Immediately after Ohio was called for Bush a disheartened friend looked up at me and said “do you believe in democracy? If Bush wins a popular vote, maybe that means he should be president.” To which I said: “I believe in democracy in the event of an informed electorate. I don’t believe this was an informed electorate; 52% of the people believe Iraq had something to do with terrorism. That’s not an informed electorate.” What if we didn’t just believe in democracy but a refined democracy? What if we believed the term was deeper than its surface implication? How can we claim to have an electorate consisting of well-developed, rational subjects when we restrict their intellectual development by cutting education funding? How can we claim to have well-defined subjects when we ghettoize their information, toy with it and limit its dispersal like capital? In the Information Democracy, everyone will be smart enough to make the stupid decisions they should be allowed to make. I refuse to restrict my definition of democracy to the intellectually starved, its like feeding your horses gruel and keeping them malnourished before they enter a race. "I am no longer a work-horse, I am a racing horse, I am your favorite horse"-Will Oldham If this is true, the next four years should be spent deregulating information, establishing more free wireless access, and funneling money into education. We will help MTV sponsor the first ever "Think Your Vote" campaign in which reasoned, well-researched arguments replace Puff Daddy and Paris Hilton in T-shirts. The real power centers aren't in the oil companies but in the F.C.C; where information is filtered and distributed down predetermined moral lines, where democratic subjects are starved and lose their electoral value.




The Integral Perspective

If we could look beyond our own egos of course we'd see the political battle in America as structures activating their roles within the Integral Spiral. Using Ken Wilber's dilineation of consciousness waves (in the cultural rift of America to be referred to as "value memes" or vmemes for short), the Bush administration is a classic blue-to-orange. (Those first tier waves briefly arebeige: instinctual; purple: magical-animistic, tribal; red: egocentric, power, feudalistic; blue: mythic-membership, conformist, fundamentalist, ethnocentric, traditional; orange: excellence, achievement, progress, modern; green: postmodern, multicultural, sensitive, pluralistic) The democrats reflect orange values while the anti-war left reflects 'green'. These are all first-tier waves and they are all flawed in that none of them allow for the total existence of one another. The green meme (academia and the left) is the most deceptive because its surface values are pluralistic but it disdains all other values. However, its existence is vital to neuter power-hungry blue, which in turn is neccessary to dissolve the much more dangerous and violent 'red' waves, embodied in many Fundamentalist terror organizations. The Blue-to-orange values of the Bush administration surge and swell in response to 'red', and the vehemence and stupidity of both are neccesary to cancel one another out, after which time the orange-to-green will get its turn to dissolve blue-to-orange values that have gotten out of control. This spiral continues slowly and awkwardly until global consciousness finally reaches second-tier, or 'yellow'values, in which all first-tier waves co-exist simultaneously, still disdaining one another but under a world-government that allows integral awareness so long as no one takes any physical action to impose its values on another.

In other words, in the long run the Bush administration is creating 'neccessary evils' to combat other 'necessary evils' that will in turn be cancelled out and replaced by another illogical yet necessary wave on the spiral, until its our turns to be the hubristic assholes. We in turn will be replaced by a culture that values all hubristic assholes equally, God Bless Pan-America.


The Artistic Perspective

What a wonderful four years this will be for hallucinogenic drugs! Be prepared to market LSD immediately; escapism is on the rise and psycho-psilocybins are the market to be in. Because W:2 will not be an apocalyptic administration, but rather a slow-paced, depressing, awkward and mentally unhinging experience due to The Empire’s inevitable march towards bankruptcy, dreamworlds, internally and externally produced will be the way to go. Roshan, aren’t you all sad and shit? Fuck no because now I’ll be housing more mushrooms than world 3-1 of Mario Brothers., I’ve even got one of those goddamn blinking stars that makes you invisible I mean invincible good fuck stop blinking what do you mean you’re not blinking oh I’m blinking hey that’s weird man!

We, as creative professionals wonder how the silence produced by our ‘resistance’ could possibly be validated. How could this have possibly happened, how could my five foot tall phallus constructed from small letter “W”’s clipped from newspapers not have swayed the vote? What about my giant ceramic chimp with the swastika painted on it, surely that had an effect on the public conscious? But it didn’t. Like all warring states under assault, the artistic community will be forced to restructre and reorganize, becoming less vocal and more subliminal, operating at the invisible bacterial level rather than as defiant, arrogant spectacle. In the next four years artistic structures, due to their context and opposition, will be forced into viral cell-formations not unlike today’s guerilla armies. Rather than house themselves in small artistic communities, the ‘world’ produced by every idiosynchratic piece of art will expand into neighboring psyches and produce bubble realities, entire universes that exist for moments and disappear into the ether. Rather than seeking to reflect upon, comment on or sway reality, art will find that its purpose is to present self-contained viable alternatives to reality. I support the resurgence of collapsible and transportable neo-modernist architecture, of mobile graffiti art, of Guerilla Brechtian theatre and high-defintion kung-fu films that materialize from thin air. The latter may be difficult but I believe that with John Woo’s assistance and holography somehow combined we can make it happen! Also, the aforementioned drugs will help.


Entertainment Perspective

As the public mind dissolves into fruity mush, social surrealism will be the category of drama and entertainment the public accepts. The right-wing and the left-wing both will embrace insane unconscious melodrama with plausible, consistent, life-affirming positions. It will be like “magical realism” only it will be simultaneously more horrifying estranged from real life and far easier to relate to. "The Passion of the Christ" is harbinger of the this trend; featuring a narrative world with the physical properties of a Warner Brothers cartoon (with Jesus in the Wile E. Coyote role) yet inexplicably hailed for its "accuracy" and realism.



The Let's Just Get Drunk and Fuck Perspective

Looking at the discrepancy in the popular vote, it appears that middle america carries far more political weight than the left. But it's not a concentration of power that trumped us in the end, it was simply a larger rural population. Urban centers tend to house smaller families because cost of living is so great. Well, maybe it's about time that changed. Instead of whining about the right, why don't you do the most natural, instinctual and fun thing to increase the members of your party: why don't you all fuck like rabbits? I know you're all worried about overpopulation and its toll on our natural resources, but as co-pilots in the U.S.S. Disaster we have a responsibility different from the rest of the world. It will make an impact several generations from now if the liberal intellegentsia populates the United States and the right, too sober and horrified to fuck as quickly, violently and loudly as we do just fails to procreate at an adequate rate. And even if that doesn't work, let's just fuck anyway because it will probably make us feel better. If we're doomed to go extinct then may we go out in a vast Dionysian meltdown, the last they see of us a wild mess of asses and arms and vaseline and plungers flailing in the air.

The Kill 'em All Perspective

If there’s anything more self-destructive and pathetic than pacifism and civil disobedience in the face of war, I’d like to know what it is. First, we need to repeal the Brady law. Then we need to get ourselves some guns and foment well-planned, armed revolt.* One of the greatest fallacies historians believe is that Ghandi somehow influenced British colonialists with non-violent resistance. In fact, the only reason the British responded the way they did is because Ghandi increased cultural consciousness, which lead to an increased nationalism and armed resistance. Had Indians not taken up arms, the British would still be there today.

Fuck that. Take to the streets. I fully support uncivil disobedience, armed resistance and systematic violence. This administration does not respond to democratic proccess, to facts or to popular opinion. 100,000 Iraqi civilians = 33 September 11ths. And if you don't fight against this, you are going to have to fight eventually-what are you going to do when a mandatory draft is initiated? Make a painting in protest? A funny animated movie circulated to your friends on the Internets? It's silly to ignore what this is all leading to, and it isn't something rational or democratic: it's something dark and violent.

* In the wake of a young lady who recently was visited by the Secret Service, I would like to emphasize that this is all done in the interest of satire and any resemblance to anyone fictional or living is purely coincidental.

The Gay Rights Perspective

HAHAHAHAHAHA! That was just a joke. You have the right to burn in Hell.



The Uber-Orwellian Perspective

My cornflakes have been RFID tagged. John Ashcraft has set up a small windtunnel that transports him into my brain, it’s just like Being John Malkovich. He can see everything I’m typing. In fact, he is typing. Now he’s stroking my crotch slowly and unbuttoning my jeans…dear god please help me.

The Let’s Leave America Perspective

Most of you have read it, but iMomus touched a nerve when he asked us to Exit This Roman Shell



The Humanist Perspective

I love you all so much. I’ve spent time with the “privileged” and the not so privileged who believed in this election more than they believed in apple pie and I’ve heard idiots rant about how only “guilty white people” are activists. I can honestly say, I have never been so proud of so many guilty white people in my life. All the bullshit above is only an awkward allusion to the very tangible everyday realities that keep us confident and mobile: our relationships with one another, where everything surreal and impossible gestates. Despite what may or may not happen the next four years, I pledge to make this world a stranger, smarter, more well-dressed world to live in, and I hope you do too.