DISCORD, WITH OCCASIONAL TEETH

I spent yesterday evening failing an exam within a corrupt institution that I despise,* instead of fighting in the city I love. 


This was only a few hours after a professor screened Lawrence Lessig's presentation at the 2011 National Conference for Media Reform--in which he discusses tactics through which to alter the current dominant praxis of private corporations funding public elections/representatives--and I sat next to a girl who spent the hour on her laptop, clicking through pictures of herself and shopping online for clothes.


BUT, glad I staved off the ol' suicidal impulse long enough to observe more evidence of OPD being total shithead assholes:







...The following comes from Danilo Kiš's Homo Poeticus; his characterization of a nationalist is spot-on. It's how we all should be thinking about cops, as well, and what it means to live under an authority that only exists in the abstract.


So, yeah.
This is just the first part, but read the whole thing:


"First of all, nationalism is paranoia--collective and individual paranoia. As a collective paranoia, nationalism is born out of fear and envy. But above all, it appears as a result of an individual's lost consciousness. Therefore, collective paranoia is nothing else but a summary of many individual paranoias brought together to a level of paroxysm. If an individual is not able to "express" himself within the framework of his given society, or if that given society does not stimulate him as an individual, or if disqualifies him--that is, if the society does not allow him to discover his own entity--then that individual is forced to look for his entity outside the society's identity and outside society's social structures. In so doing, the individual becomes a member of a clandestine group whose goal and task is, or seems to be, to solve problems of monumental importance: a survival and prestige of that group's nation. It seeks to preserve its national tradition, values, and relics, its national folklore, philosophy, ethics, literature, etc. Obsessed with that secret, semi-public or public mission, our Mr. X becomes a man of action, a national tribune, a pseudo-individual. And now, when he is brought down to earth, to his own size, when he is isolated from the faceless crowd and removed from the post where he has placed himself, or where others have placed him, we have before our eyes an individual without individuality, a nationalist...that is his only social entity. It makes him important and proves his existence."






*Related:
Me and some of the other Anarcho/Socialist/Hyphenated Whatevers at brkly are planning action in response to the UC Regents meeting next month, at which they will vote on the proposed multi-year 81% fee increase. That is bullshit and cannot happen.


write here: a.e.cruse@gmail.com  if you want to get involved.