THE REBEL STAND

“What are you rebelling against, Johnny?”
“What’ve you got?” – Dialogue from The Wild One

Last Saturday I halted myself at the start of a rant about how liberals now want to call themselves “progressives”, I presume in the belief that the word “liberal” is now so tainted that it has become untenable. By Sunday, I had realized that I shouldn’t let it worry me. I was never a bloody liberal anyway. Yes, I embrace certain planks of a liberal platform, but liberals have always recoiled from a whole lot of what they assumed were my goals, firmly convincing me that liberalism was only ever a half-measure, and fell well short of the downfall of the Patriarchy and the overthrow of Western Civilization by lunchtime. And now they want to be called “progressive” I have to wonder just how much progress they really intend, and am thus holding off from flocking to the progressive colors.

I will admit, though, that part of my problem is a matter of heritage. Like the great majority of Englishmen, I’m somewhat disinclined to join clubs, parties, and organization. The British are notorious for being what sociologists call “unclubable”. Our juvenile gangs were always amorphous, like mods and rockers, and never went in for club colors and names like the Sharks, Jets, Diabolos, or Amboy Dukes. I have never enrolled in AA, the NRA, the IRA, the CIA, the PTA, or the Dead Rabbits. It’s all those damned cards that you have to carry, plus a bad case of the Groucho Marx syndrome; not wanting to be a member of any club that would have me as a member. Back when I was a teenager, my pal Alan Moore (no relation) tried to enroll me in the Young Communist League, dangling the temptation of commie gals who believed in free love. I was given a nice enamel badge, but I never completed the paperwork or went to a meeting. (The free love turned out to be largely mythic.) Which was just as well, because, if I had, I would have been excluded from entering the US without a lengthy process of recanting. I was once Minister of Information in the White Panther Party UK, but that was mainly an vehicle for agitprop ploys, and the confusion of the aforementioned liberals.

I fear I have always taken the stance of the lone rebel. The rebel stand is maybe a legacy of the Irish side of the family, but, by this stage of my development, I have been standing like a rebel for so long that it’s become a way of life. On the other hand, the political climate has turned so grim that maybe it’s time that we rebels gathered around some improvised black flag and began making a few demands of these progressives, in particular how we want our time honored, impossibly utopian, sex, drugs, and advanced rama-lama to be a part of the agenda – free, legal and polymorphous – otherwise we start slitting a few throats in the name of progress.

(And as I finish writing, I hear Kerry won in Iowa, which moves me nearer giving up on the whole process and endorsing Al Sharpton, because the fix is in anyway.)

TRIVIA
A couple of weeks ago I watched The Seven Samurai, and realized, after all these years, that Yoda is totally based on the Old Man of the Village in the Kurosawa classic. Same face, same wrinkles, same way of walking. Check it out if you don’t believe me.

CRYPTIQUE – She has your number, and the frequency, Kenneth.

***********************

THIS BLOG HAS NEW POSTS ALMOST DAILY, SO Y’ALL COME BACK REAL SOON, Y’HEAR?

***********************