Life grown young and sweet.

From Covenant Zone.

Acts of violence against property and persons is a bad thing, right? Destroying functional edifices and healthy bodies is a sign of rage and hatred in the perpetrator, no? Smashing, burning, killing, these are things decent people don't do in the world. And if by odd chance they do anyway, they don't like it. They don't do it with happy enthusiasm. Do they?

Oh, I say Yes! Smash things, kill people-- and like it. Yeah, even love it and laugh about it. Celebrate destruction and death. Look on this as a happy thing.

There will be some people who don't need any further discussion to find themselves in agreement with the above. They will be the ones we find on death row. The rest of us do need an explanation. Once we have it I think it'll be known and felt as reasonable and necessary and right that we wreck and kill. Crazy as it seems, Bakunin is right that destruction is creation in disguise. War is a right act. Maiming and killing individuals is a proper thing. We should do it and be glad of it. We should hate those who don't join us. Maybe we should even kill them on occasion. We should consider being Enthused! about killing people.

"In my village, all the lawyers are named Kalashnikov."

Humanity is bifurcating, splitting between those who remain primitive and pre-feudal and those who are and are becoming Modern. There are in the world cavemen and spacemen. We cannot continue to co-exist. This town ain't big enough for the two of us, this global village. Somebody's got till sun-up to get out of town. Come sun-up there's gonna be a shoot out on Main Street. First rule of a gun fight? Don't show up with a club. Bring a laser ray-gun.

There are two kinds of people in the world today who will define the future of Humanity for the coming millennium, and none of them are cavemen Muslims. They are the detritus of Humanity, even if their side should triumph in the bifurcation of Humanity. The two sides of the significant world's population are us. We are in the midst of a civil war, and who among us wins will decide the future. There's gonna be some killin' done. The Sheriff and and outlaws are facing off and the townsfolk are hiding behind their doors in the hope that when the dust settles the good guys win. The passivists are useless to us and to them. Forget 'em. This fight is between the raging, hate-filled scum pacifists and the likes of my kind, known here at The Fortress to our mentally retarded denizen Clarence as "war mongrels." Clare might be retarded but he's not stupid. Let slip the dogs of war.

There is a script in this Modern world we live in that most people have a good sense of, even knowing some of the phrases and lines by heart, having grown up with them and having heard them as the way things are. The script is anti-war. Most people recite from it without any real thought involved in who wrote it or what the lines mean. They're extras. The anti-war biggies, the stars of today's play, they are professional actors. The rest of us are a very irate audience. this play sucks. By God, we want a refund and a new show.

Let's sing another song, boys. This one has grown old and bitter.

The sheriff crouches in the corner with the Prozac dealer, the grief councillors fluttering around the wings, the social workers ready to take distraught women and children to foster homes and day care centres for trauma treatments. It's a sad, sad story. The sheriff in his space suit cringes, cries, and weeps in the arms of his male life-partner. He consults with his lawyer and assistants. He checks with his accountant. He gives a power point presentation to his fans and unionised staff.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch....

The anti-war fascists have prepared the cavemen, giving them money and filling them up with righteous indignation about the evils of the townsfolk, and especially about the evils of the sheriff. The cavemen pop off by mistake because they don't quite get the mechanics of their bomb-belts, but never mind, there are more where they came from, and besides, this isn't about the cavemen: this is about the anti-war fascists using the cavemen to beat the sheriff. The cavemen are pumped. They are ready to face the cowardly sheriff, and they don't quite get it but they know they must be right about whatever they're doing because all the anti-war fascists have been telling them for a century they should be fighting the sheriff. Oh, who knows why? It just feels right. So off they go.

The cavemen pile into the street, whooping and screaming and carrying on, and the sheriff blows away a few of them, and the cave men return to the anti-war pacifists to rage and beat their chests and to hear how heroic they were and that they should try again. The sheriff and the townspeople all seek counselling. It's the guilt, you know. It's so unbearably hard to live with. We all need Prozac. We send the cavemen a cheque to soothe their woes and to show we don't hold a grudge. Yup, and here they come again. Pass that Zoloft. It's all our fault. Where's my life-partner? I'm going to weep.

What are you going to do? It's right there in the script.

[Uh oh, our friend Dag is about to write something inappropriate. I just have this feeling he's going to do it again.]

Cavemen with bombs?! Good grief, kill them.

[There it is. He did it. Oh, Dag, you dawg.]

Townsfolk and spacepeople, what are we doing? Why are we wallowing in a puddle of sentimentality and stupid self-made guilt? These caveman ain't no friends of mine, and you don't like 'em. They torture people, cut off people's heads, beat and enslave their women, mutilate and rape their children. What's the story here? Name 219 things you like about these people. OK, name 31. Or even one. they're Human. They deserve to live. And so do others, those very people the cavemen will destroy and murder if we don't stop them from it. It's not like the cavemen are going away never to be seen again. We're stuck with them. And this global village town ain't big enough for the both of us. Nope, that ain't gonna happen.

Are we good people or are we evil like the pacifists and anti-war fascists say we are? Well, which? It's an either or question. Are we good and even getting better? Or are we (refer to script....)?

I find that I'm one of those unsophisticated stupid guys, a Rightwing religious bigot no different from bin Laden, which I'll have you know comes as a shocking surprise to me. I'm one of those who thinks there are rights and wrongs, good and evil. Worse than that, (and yes, it does get worse, dear reader,) I am enthused about doing good rather than evil. Oh no, I'm even a fanatic. I like the idea of killing the bad guys till they are so beaten there is no more strength left in them to continue. That's me being a war-mongrel. I'm insensitive.

I'm not the last guy in the West like myself, though it often seems that I'm the only guy who likes myself. In fact, I'm kind of enthused about myself. I even like being alive. I like other people being alive. I like those things so much that I'm happy to go out of my way to kill people who beat up women and who cut off men's heads for religious reasons or whatever. I'm so enthused about other people that I go out of my way to track down and do serious harm to those who explode bombs in public marketplaces to kill at random. I not only like it, I'm not only enthused about it, I go so far as to write that others should do the same until we either subdue for permanent the cavemen and the dhimmi fascists who incite them or till we lose the struggle altogether. I write that we should feel really good about smashing the caves and killing the bad guys. I write that we should as nations make war not consumer products.

We should make waging war on the primitives our reason for living. We should like it so much and feel so good about it that we develop a serious case of war fever. We should stop worrying and learn to love the bomb.

I like that guy, Winston Churchill, a fascist, I hear.

I think a curse should rest on me — because I love this war. I know it's smashing and shattering the lives of thousands every moment — and yet — I can't help it — I enjoy every second of it.

A letter to a friend (1916)

This, friend, is a letter to you. I don't see one hope in Hell of us liking a war waged for the sake of more multiculturalism. Maybe it's just me but I tend to think that waging a war for the sake of more Human Rights Commission hearings into Islamophobia and insults against Islam is going to do us more harm than good. I think we might find something better in life if we look to the positive and get enthused about it to the point we actually go out and make it happen even if we have to smash things and kill people to make it happen. I think that with some real enthusiasm for our mission we might hjust do some good. I know I enjoy it.

And those who don't? They're not nice people actually. They get people killed. They don't do the killing themselves. They set up others to do it for them. How do we defeat them? Look to the past a bit, to Churchill's time:
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In August 1914, a few months after the start of the First World War, Admiral Charles Fitzgerald founded the Order of the White Feather with support from the prominent author Mary Ward. The organisation aimed to coerce men to enlist in the British Army by persuading women to present them with a white feather if they were not wearing a uniform.

The campaign was very effective, and spread throughout several other nations in the British Commonwealth. So much so that it started to cause problems for the government when public servants came under pressure to enlist. This prompted the Home Secretary, Reginald McKenna, to issue employees in state industries with lapel badges reading 'King and Country' to indicate that they too were serving the war effort.

[....]

Pacifism

In contrast, the white feather has been partially embraced by pacifist organisations as a sign of harmlessness. During the First World War the pacifist Fenner Brockway received so many white feathers he was known to comment that he now had enough feathers to make a fan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_feather
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(Let's sing another song, boys, this one has grown old and bitter.)

http://www.leonardcohenfiles.com/album3.html
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Oh, I could make a fan!

Let's get a new social script and some new actors on the world stage. Let's wreck things and kill people. Let's kick some butt. And let's realise that what we do is the best thing anyone can do. Let's be enthused about it.