October 23rd – We’ve raided the stupidity files
here before but it’s a rich vein to mine. Try this one for size.
We all know, anyone with even a modicum of street awareness
that is, that there has never been a better piece of propaganda launched than
the tired old, War on Drugs threat
that successive governments have foisted on a, in the main, totally
unresponsive and underwhelmed populace.
If we just cast our minds back (you don’t have to go too far)
we can all come up with rabid reasons for recent inter-gang drug cartels all
wanting a bigger piece of the action (China, Japan, Mexico, Columbia…the list
is endless) and of the arrogance of the west who STILL think they know best and
by so doing alienate vast swathes of hard-working people in many countries by destroying
the only available farm crop they have, thereby removing their means to earning
a livelihood, and of the multi-millions (guilty and innocent alike) who have
died because of these policies…and this, we are told, is the best solution to
the problem…jeeze, talk about intellects’ the size of weevils. So, in the
interests of fairness we have to ask;
Is it working?
I’ll leave you to come to your own conclusions.
In Mexico, where drug-dealing is the direct cause and since
2006, 43,000 people have been killed; the
pace of killings is escalating (in just one attack just over twelve months ago,
52 people were killed – mostly women playing bingo – when gunmen torched a
Monterrey casino) with more than half the dead, 22,000, killed in just the last 18 months; so that’s a
kill-rate of one person every 35 minutes. You wanna think about that for a few
minutes…not too long otherwise you’ll be forever behind the total, but it does
bear a few moments to consider, if only in respect of the innocents. And yet how
can this be when the US India or Bangladesh
I’ll leave you to ponder.
What I wanted to highlight was just what level of idiocy can
be achieved with very little effort. That the cul-de-sac mentality of the
people we allow to be in charge of such things; drugs, famine, overseas development
and such, has, can and will plumb almost any depth in its misreading of the
situation.
White Rabbit, a song written by Grace Slick (singer-songwriter-artist)
and which we’ve come up against before in this daily guff, was recorded by
Jefferson Airplane on the Surrealistic
Pillow album released in 66/7. I’ve written of my liking for the track purely
on performance grounds, it’s a standout performance by Ms. Slick that for me
has yet to be bettered. The background and meaning to its lyrics have been
discussed and chewed over for years (not going to do it again you’ll be
relieved to know, that’ll be over to you) but we can start with some givens.
1) Yes, it does refer to the stories that many American
parents read to their children; that these children read in school; that these
children performed in plays about; that was written by a revered children’s
author of the 19th century: Lewis Carroll.
2) Yes, it does make a connection between the Adventures of Alice and the use of
hallucinatory products to achieve a similar aim, a similar view on the world.
3) Yes, the original stories contained references to a
hookah-smoking caterpillar that Alice
4) Yes, Ms. Slick used the slow-build of Ravel’s Bolero as the template for the songs
trajectory from opening to dénouement.
For me it’s a perfect pop song perfectly delivered and
carrying enough subterfuge and literate references to keep it interesting…and
as for her voice? But you see, for all it’s literate phrasing and referencing,
for those with a stunted enough intellect it has dubious, possibly subversive
undertones, and these undertones need to be rooted out of the minds of our
children; Amen.
So, as part of their all-reaching War on Drugs policy, on this day in 1998, Fort Zumwalt High School
in St. Louis, with backing of the judiciary, the good townsfolk and the federal
government’s paid representatives, took a case to the courts which sought to
ban the playing of the song, White Rabbit’,
by the school’s marching band as it;
Contained drug
references.
Yes it does, well fuckin’ spotted. It also contains;
References to feminism, sexual equality, to bigotry, to racism,
to the fact that, yes, we can turn to literature to find some of the answers to
the human condition, that some of those answers will advice us on how to
reverse the fuck-ups being perpetrated daily by money-grubbing conglomerates and
all done with our un-requested permission given through our passivity. Yes, it
foretells the beginning of a time of oversubscription by doctors of mother’s little helpers and where that
will and has led. Yes, it tells of a way to seek enlightenment that isn’t
always through the voice of your elders and betters, that answers can be found
by looking inward and that, as with any work of fiction (and that’s what this
song is) just by taking time to read the lyrics, to read and understand, answers will be found by those prepared to
look:
Didn’t see ‘em going to court over that sort of subversive content did we? Well done Fort Zumwalt
High School
Just taken me one hour and forty minutes to write this…woman,
man, child…? There’s another three gone.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWWsfrfq69A
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