Occupying the Outside
I got back to Los Angeles after two weeks in London where I literally wrote every damn day until at least midnight every night. The weird thing about writing is you end up with massive holes in your life - September 2010 is completely missing, because of the political drama I wrote about Freddie Laker. January is gone because I was working for Channel 4. April - completely fucked. June? In Scotland researching the mining industry. So I frequently end up with huge gaps where I've disappeared into my own weird little isolated writing world for 4-8 weeks, and I pop up again and find out that Egypt's gone into uprising, or Katrina's destroyed New Orleans, and I'm like WOW! SHIT! while everyone else is bemused by the fact I only just discovered we had a new President or something (I was exaggerating on that one: I did manage to stay abreast of a campaign I worked on).
So anyway. City of Angels. I arrived late on Saturday night after a loooong flight (Justin Bieber movie and four episodes of The Killing). I lined up, stinking of old lady farts from the flatulent Polish bird sat next to me for ten hours, and shuffled up to immigration for my customary crap photo and fingerprint check. The guy at the desk looked at me suspiciously (mohawks tend to make authorities suspicious) and then decided to question me for half an hour, drilling me on every detail of my life. Why was I a chef on boats? Why was I on a B1 visa in 2003? How long did I stay in Florida in 2004? It rattled me to my core, and reminded me of how fragile my time in America is, how dependent on some twat in immigration who might just be in a really bad mood one day, or not like my nose or something. They could decide to throw me out any second, and they wouldn't need a reason. For some reason, my seven years of going back and forth without question gave me complacency, made me feel a sense of entitlement - and the United States does not condone entitlement. You have to earn everything here, sell your soul, act grateful all the time. The only thing they can't take away from you is citizenship. Did you know that? Once an American, always one. I'd quite like my US passport, because I love this country as much as I loathe it. My run-in with USCIS, however, really shook me up, to the extent that I went to see a new immigration lawyer, some guy way out in Encino, first thing on Monday morning. It took me bloody ages to get there, and I later discovered it was because Obama was in town. I'd wondered why everyone was on the streets demonstrating. Yep, missed that one on the last two week blackout. I also completely missed the start of Occupation Wall Street - I discovered that from a bunch of grainy youtube vids featuring earnest, inarticulate teenagers.
I'm glad it's getting more mainstream media attention, because I was really put off by their website, bad videos of kids who had no idea why they were there, online comments like 'the streets of America will burn', and stupid shit like "let's go march on this street and look at the cars we'll never be able to afford which THE RICH own" - probably written by kids skiving off their 40k a year schools. That kind of stuff is alienating, destructive and harmful to the cause. I'm all for anarchy and causing trouble - hell, give me a law, and I have an almost pathological need to break it - but I do not want to join a protest which is a bunch of trustafarians in a park with a well meaning, but vague claim to be 'the 99%' and an inability to clearly state what their aims are. One, the 99%? I think the nutters in middle-America who still believe in big business and hawk American flags on their (soon to be repo-ed) house might not want you to represent them, because they're quite happy in cloud cuckoo-land. Two - the poor, the uninsured, the unacceptable sections of society existed well before Wall St got really dodgy and deregulated, and you didn't represent them then. They're still gonna be there when you middle classes get your credit lines up and running and your savings accounts rosy and flush. What then? Are you still gonna represent the other 80%? Or are you going to be too busy, say, campaigning for undocumented citizens' rights or watching Joey play baseball at his private school at the weekend? And what about the rest of the world, America? Nice to see you get a bit motivated, but you didn't seem too concerned until your comfort got affected, oh middle classes. It's OK, we're all selfish - we're human beings. But don't pat yourself on the back quite yet. Get yourself back on your feet and reserve a little bit of passion for someone else....
Having said all this, I'm totally into the Occupation now the unions are getting involved, it's becoming more mainstream and representative, (yeah, I'm a sucker for Michael Moore, Susan Sarandon and Postal Workers) and that kind of earnest, youthful zeal is being taken up, and metamorphosing into something tangible, something we can all taste and recognize. To a beat-up cynic with recession war scars all over my twisted soul, being lectured at by the over-educated, under-employed and relatively life-unscathed just comes across as sanctimonious BS. That's probably my blatant ageism and it's definitely the massive chip I have on my shoulder against the wealthy middle classes who claim poverty, or continually profess not to be rich but seem to live these amazing lives which to a poor person - it looks like rich, dude. But there it is. We need really young passionate people to provide fire and passion and get the ball rolling - the rest of us are struggling daily with 18% APRs, car repos, jobs falling through and mortgage repayments, and I guess we're still shell shocked that this shit all happened, and doesn't seem to get better. I know dragging my ass through the Obama campaign when I was still reeling from an enormous medical bill for MRSA (uninsured) and losing every single freelance gig I had practically killed me, to the extent that it took me two years of intermittent homelessness and absolute hell before I was finally able to regain some kind of even keel in around March of this year (after I gave up my car for repossession, incidentally).
So we need the yoof for sure, but we also need age, experience and a wise, guiding hand to stop the Occupation toppling over into some kind of London-type riot, or simply becoming a bunch of kids banging bongos, eating pizza and posting on their twitter accounts. I kind of like riots, but the idea of white, middle class kids rollicking through New York throwing Kombucha bottles at McDonalds doesn't appeal. I think that's probably why most liberals were pretty unenthusiastic at the start, as Glenn Greenwald writes in Salon - and let's face it, naked chicks have their place in Burning Man, but on the streets of New York... I just don't want to see your tits, excited girl. It's not going to make me join your cause, it's going to make me think you're an exhibitionist fool and join the GOP.
Just kidding.
So now I'm pretty excited about this whole thing, although reservations still linger. When you've marched for a whole bunch of shit and seen anti-war movements spring up and be ignored by governments professing to be left wing, when you've had Hope and seen it crushed in the onslaught of a GOP which controls the House, when you've watched the horrendous Tea Party crawl out from under a rock and gain political traction, when you've tried in vain to get the media to cover issues like the DREAM act years before it had a chance of getting to the Senate - you have caution, and you have circumspection, and you don't want to join a movement only for it to turn into a bunch of sixteen year old anti-capitalists preaching to you about shit you already know, and joining forces with - I dunno, PETA, who are all fucking mad. (Disclaimer: I bought a second hand rabbit fur coat in London two weeks ago, and I am scared of being sprayed by animal activists who don't distinguish between new dead and old dead. Despite the shopkeeper's reassurances that the rabbit did not die in vain just for the coat, "it was eaten" she said, without irony - I still worry)
So I wonder what will happen now. The government and big business are so deeply intertwined that I personally can't see how you can untangle this mess without massively reforming a White House that's enormously corrupt, that condones Wall St and its excesses, and that feeds off them. I think governmental reform, transparency and bank regulation is the only way to safeguard our future. But then we're still taking for granted that once the enormous tasks of restoring the middle classes, taxing the rich, dismantling Big Corporations, and making government more accountable and transparent - once this is achieved, we kind of assume all the other problems: severe poverty, under-funded public schools, rising costs of healthcare, racism, global warming, communicable diseases, animal cruelty and morons who buy fur coats - are going to follow and become magically solved.
That's obviously not the case.
I can't help thinking that once the middle classes are OK again, they'll go back to being the complacent, selfish assholes that people are - and I include myself in that assumption. I'm fortunate in that being an alcoholic, neurotic mad person, if I lapse even for a second, my life collapses around me. It's pretty exhausting, always policing yourself and paying for minute lapses with minor tragedy and chaos. But in a sense it's pretty lucky, because it means I have to stay on the ball all the time. I don't get to be too complacent. Even on a good day I'm highly aware that I'm a deeply unpleasant person, which...
I forgot the point.
But now - now we're in a situation now where we're teetering on change, on some kind of revolution, and we can't be complacent, we have to be the best, we have to keep learning and evolving, and we have to resolve not to look back, because there was no golden era pre-crash, pre-banks, pre-Bush, pre-Obama, pre-Wall Street. Which means we still have the opportunity to make it happen.
This could be that opportunity, if it's played right.
That's pretty fucking cool.
I still refuse to wear hemp and bang bongos though.
So anyway. City of Angels. I arrived late on Saturday night after a loooong flight (Justin Bieber movie and four episodes of The Killing). I lined up, stinking of old lady farts from the flatulent Polish bird sat next to me for ten hours, and shuffled up to immigration for my customary crap photo and fingerprint check. The guy at the desk looked at me suspiciously (mohawks tend to make authorities suspicious) and then decided to question me for half an hour, drilling me on every detail of my life. Why was I a chef on boats? Why was I on a B1 visa in 2003? How long did I stay in Florida in 2004? It rattled me to my core, and reminded me of how fragile my time in America is, how dependent on some twat in immigration who might just be in a really bad mood one day, or not like my nose or something. They could decide to throw me out any second, and they wouldn't need a reason. For some reason, my seven years of going back and forth without question gave me complacency, made me feel a sense of entitlement - and the United States does not condone entitlement. You have to earn everything here, sell your soul, act grateful all the time. The only thing they can't take away from you is citizenship. Did you know that? Once an American, always one. I'd quite like my US passport, because I love this country as much as I loathe it. My run-in with USCIS, however, really shook me up, to the extent that I went to see a new immigration lawyer, some guy way out in Encino, first thing on Monday morning. It took me bloody ages to get there, and I later discovered it was because Obama was in town. I'd wondered why everyone was on the streets demonstrating. Yep, missed that one on the last two week blackout. I also completely missed the start of Occupation Wall Street - I discovered that from a bunch of grainy youtube vids featuring earnest, inarticulate teenagers.
I'm glad it's getting more mainstream media attention, because I was really put off by their website, bad videos of kids who had no idea why they were there, online comments like 'the streets of America will burn', and stupid shit like "let's go march on this street and look at the cars we'll never be able to afford which THE RICH own" - probably written by kids skiving off their 40k a year schools. That kind of stuff is alienating, destructive and harmful to the cause. I'm all for anarchy and causing trouble - hell, give me a law, and I have an almost pathological need to break it - but I do not want to join a protest which is a bunch of trustafarians in a park with a well meaning, but vague claim to be 'the 99%' and an inability to clearly state what their aims are. One, the 99%? I think the nutters in middle-America who still believe in big business and hawk American flags on their (soon to be repo-ed) house might not want you to represent them, because they're quite happy in cloud cuckoo-land. Two - the poor, the uninsured, the unacceptable sections of society existed well before Wall St got really dodgy and deregulated, and you didn't represent them then. They're still gonna be there when you middle classes get your credit lines up and running and your savings accounts rosy and flush. What then? Are you still gonna represent the other 80%? Or are you going to be too busy, say, campaigning for undocumented citizens' rights or watching Joey play baseball at his private school at the weekend? And what about the rest of the world, America? Nice to see you get a bit motivated, but you didn't seem too concerned until your comfort got affected, oh middle classes. It's OK, we're all selfish - we're human beings. But don't pat yourself on the back quite yet. Get yourself back on your feet and reserve a little bit of passion for someone else....
Having said all this, I'm totally into the Occupation now the unions are getting involved, it's becoming more mainstream and representative, (yeah, I'm a sucker for Michael Moore, Susan Sarandon and Postal Workers) and that kind of earnest, youthful zeal is being taken up, and metamorphosing into something tangible, something we can all taste and recognize. To a beat-up cynic with recession war scars all over my twisted soul, being lectured at by the over-educated, under-employed and relatively life-unscathed just comes across as sanctimonious BS. That's probably my blatant ageism and it's definitely the massive chip I have on my shoulder against the wealthy middle classes who claim poverty, or continually profess not to be rich but seem to live these amazing lives which to a poor person - it looks like rich, dude. But there it is. We need really young passionate people to provide fire and passion and get the ball rolling - the rest of us are struggling daily with 18% APRs, car repos, jobs falling through and mortgage repayments, and I guess we're still shell shocked that this shit all happened, and doesn't seem to get better. I know dragging my ass through the Obama campaign when I was still reeling from an enormous medical bill for MRSA (uninsured) and losing every single freelance gig I had practically killed me, to the extent that it took me two years of intermittent homelessness and absolute hell before I was finally able to regain some kind of even keel in around March of this year (after I gave up my car for repossession, incidentally).
So we need the yoof for sure, but we also need age, experience and a wise, guiding hand to stop the Occupation toppling over into some kind of London-type riot, or simply becoming a bunch of kids banging bongos, eating pizza and posting on their twitter accounts. I kind of like riots, but the idea of white, middle class kids rollicking through New York throwing Kombucha bottles at McDonalds doesn't appeal. I think that's probably why most liberals were pretty unenthusiastic at the start, as Glenn Greenwald writes in Salon - and let's face it, naked chicks have their place in Burning Man, but on the streets of New York... I just don't want to see your tits, excited girl. It's not going to make me join your cause, it's going to make me think you're an exhibitionist fool and join the GOP.
Just kidding.
So now I'm pretty excited about this whole thing, although reservations still linger. When you've marched for a whole bunch of shit and seen anti-war movements spring up and be ignored by governments professing to be left wing, when you've had Hope and seen it crushed in the onslaught of a GOP which controls the House, when you've watched the horrendous Tea Party crawl out from under a rock and gain political traction, when you've tried in vain to get the media to cover issues like the DREAM act years before it had a chance of getting to the Senate - you have caution, and you have circumspection, and you don't want to join a movement only for it to turn into a bunch of sixteen year old anti-capitalists preaching to you about shit you already know, and joining forces with - I dunno, PETA, who are all fucking mad. (Disclaimer: I bought a second hand rabbit fur coat in London two weeks ago, and I am scared of being sprayed by animal activists who don't distinguish between new dead and old dead. Despite the shopkeeper's reassurances that the rabbit did not die in vain just for the coat, "it was eaten" she said, without irony - I still worry)
So I wonder what will happen now. The government and big business are so deeply intertwined that I personally can't see how you can untangle this mess without massively reforming a White House that's enormously corrupt, that condones Wall St and its excesses, and that feeds off them. I think governmental reform, transparency and bank regulation is the only way to safeguard our future. But then we're still taking for granted that once the enormous tasks of restoring the middle classes, taxing the rich, dismantling Big Corporations, and making government more accountable and transparent - once this is achieved, we kind of assume all the other problems: severe poverty, under-funded public schools, rising costs of healthcare, racism, global warming, communicable diseases, animal cruelty and morons who buy fur coats - are going to follow and become magically solved.
That's obviously not the case.
I can't help thinking that once the middle classes are OK again, they'll go back to being the complacent, selfish assholes that people are - and I include myself in that assumption. I'm fortunate in that being an alcoholic, neurotic mad person, if I lapse even for a second, my life collapses around me. It's pretty exhausting, always policing yourself and paying for minute lapses with minor tragedy and chaos. But in a sense it's pretty lucky, because it means I have to stay on the ball all the time. I don't get to be too complacent. Even on a good day I'm highly aware that I'm a deeply unpleasant person, which...
I forgot the point.
But now - now we're in a situation now where we're teetering on change, on some kind of revolution, and we can't be complacent, we have to be the best, we have to keep learning and evolving, and we have to resolve not to look back, because there was no golden era pre-crash, pre-banks, pre-Bush, pre-Obama, pre-Wall Street. Which means we still have the opportunity to make it happen.
This could be that opportunity, if it's played right.
That's pretty fucking cool.
I still refuse to wear hemp and bang bongos though.
MIMI IN NY | 3:43 AM |
