The Nihilism of Everyday Life

The recording artist Nine Inch Nails often uses themes of denial of reality, especially in the form of solipsism, or the belief that the self is the only true being and that all others are illusions or actually mere projections of the self. Interestingly, these themes are often accompanied by the dissolution of the self. Identity lines and ethical boundaries rupture. For the full effect I recommend you listen to the below:

In Head Down he sings:

“This is not my face

This is not my life

There is not a single thing

That I can recognize…

This is all a dream,

And none of you are real…”

In Right Where It Belongs he sings:

“What if everything around you

isn't quite as it seems?

What if all the world you think you know

is an elaborate dream?”

In Only he sings:

“I’m becoming less defined

As days go by

Fading away

Well, you might say I’m losing focus

Kind of drifting in the abstract

In terms of how I see myself…

Sometimes I think I can see right through myself…

Less concerned about fitting into the world!

(Your world, that is.)”

In The Line Begins to Blur he sings:

“The more I stay in here, the more it’s not so clear.

The more I stay in here, the more I disappear.

As far as I have gone, I knew what side I’m on;

but now I’m not so sure. The line begins to blur.”

These motifs in Trent Reznor’s work are very evocative, and reflected not only lyrically but sonically, in the form of eerie, dreamy synthesizer echoes and disorienting shifts in context from static to cheering crowds, from whispering to shouting. This says something about our times.

As humans we desire human contact. We desire co-creation of reality, collaborative participation. True human contact exists through common labor. By acting upon the world outside of ourselves, we become ourselves. By actualizing our will in the world around us, we discover and create who we are. Only through free creative labor can there be any such thing as an “I,” and only through common creative effort can there be any such thing as “we.”

Throughout most of our lives, our labor is not cooperative at all, but competitive. We do not find ourselves in our work, but we are assigned rote tasks by bureaucracies, tasks which are not fulfilling because they do not come from us.

We do not experience people in any kind of unity. Other people devolve from partners in life to personal enemies, from personal enemies to impersonal competitors, from impersonal competitors to obstacle-objects.

Some people are lucky enough to have the money to remove themselves from the rat race. Effectively all they have done is reduced their frequency of contact with meaningless objects. We are superficially surrounded by people, but at a deeper level are alone. Naturally we are drawn to make our lives consistent with what is actually real, and our effective aloneness causes us to seek actual physical isolation from other bodies.

Our lack of genuine human contact begins to convince us that we are not even surrounded by people, but only the illusion of people. We are surrounded by irritating objects and obstacles merely masquerading in the form of people. We may not necessarily become self-conscious, self-labeling solipsists. We may give it a good deal of thought, we might not. Even if we do not consciously become solipsists, we are forced to behave like them. There is no difference between a solipsist philosopher and an ordinary person in practice, except a bit of awareness and clarity. Our circumstances drive us toward increasingly dealing with people only in professionalized, bureaucratized relationships – not human relationships. These relationships are either of commander and commanded between people of different rank, or of competition between people of the same rank. Whenever we speak to a person we are really speaking to a title, an office, a department, a division of labor. If we looked for a person, we could not find them. Nothing feels natural, everything feels foreign. As a great rebel of the 1960’s Mario Savio described, “We are strangers in our own lives.” Naturally this is a depressing arrangement.

This effective solipsism in turns leads to fantasy, denial of reality, belief that life is but a dream. Again this can manifest in the form of actual self-conscious nihilists or people who simply act as if nothing matters. This is because we humans as social beings find our reference points in real human relationships with real other humans. But in society’s current state we do not have very much in the way of real human contact, and therefore lose our reference points for reality.

Finally the perceived collapse of reality leads to a perceived collapse of the self. Without any grounding in reality, we ourselves lose that most self-creating thing: our labor, our ability to have a goal or desire, create a plan to achieve it, and act it out. If there is no reality – or in reality, no meaningful reality – then there is no point in doing any one thing over any other, or in doing anything at all. If there is no point in doing, there is no point in being. We come to see ourselves as passive objects in a system. We are part of a colossal machine built in a forgotten past for reasons which at some irretrievable point have become irrelevant to the actual practiced working of the machine. The machine hums on, running off of our going-through-the-motions.

Our position of isolation is destructive to our humanity not only ideologically but literally. It does destroy human reality, driving us further and further into insignificant and meaningless contexts, making which particular context in which we exist a matter of increasing indifference, Our condition is truly nihilistic, not simply in the attitudes it creates, but in what it actually is. It is truly our destruction, our non-existence as anything more than objects. When we lose each other we lose our anchor in reality, and when we lose our anchor in reality we lose ourselves.

Besides the fragmentation of the human population into isolated individuals, we also have an internal fragmentation of each individual because most of us do not control the content of our everyday labor.

At work, ours is not to question why, ours is just to do or die. Our labor is to focus only on a task, not on its significance. As we accustom ourselves to going through the motions, our human impulses dissolve into floating disembodiment. And of course after the disembodiment comes a break with reality, because if you’re not where your body is, you’re not really anywhere except la-la land. This is not an illusion, either. If you are not in your own life, you truly do not exist, except perhaps as a presence suppressed under the surface, waiting for your chance to break out.

Our experience of what is and our affirmation of what should be, our realities and our daydreamed desires, these two things never touch. We live half our lives as robot-objects and half our lives as ghosts. The divide between our inner and outer lives turns our existence as people into a series of thoughts and passions banging on the outside of real life, spectating and never participating.

College students are not excepted from this situation. Our future employers own us before we even walk in their doors. Our years in college and all the work we do are owned by the people whom we will work for – owned in advance. We are working toward becoming properly-shaped tools in their institutions. In Europe, payment for this training is spread across the entire population via taxes and free tuition channeled through governments. In the USA, we have the honor of paying for our own transformation into tools which meet our future employers’ specifications. Worse than all of this are the many required classes unrelated to our major or our interests.

No doubt all people should be exposed to the entirety of their culture, all of its categories of knowledge. However, a world-integrating vision is something which must come from the passions and curiosities of the student. It cannot be force-fed, as is attempted. Rather than becoming well-rounded people, we endure alienating busy work and are forced to stare for hours at people saying things about which we do not care. To engage in the entirety of culture is the greatest choice, but it is a choice that people must be free to make, especially by the time they are eighteen years of age. Of course in the technical sense no one is required to go to college. There is no law that says so. But this is really a fiction, much in the same way that the rich and the poor are equally free to sleep under bridges if they so choose. For most jobs of any decent life quality and pay, a liberal arts degree is required. We experience this alienation in the form of bureaucracy at our individual campuses but really it is a problem which invades campuses and originates in the private sector. Our alienation at college is only an extension of our alienation at our future jobs.

Living life as a robot is not only a workplace affair (as if the workplace has not now extended to the entire planet, especially in the academic practice of assigning homework). It is something extending to every corner of our culture. A homosexual living “in the closet” lives a half-life, going along and “passing,” appearing to conform to the approved sexual party line of the USA. Behind the scenes, their true passions live a secret existence. Their practiced life and their imagined life do not touch, object and ghost.

And it is not an issue affecting only a fraction of the population. If you were placed with a random set of any Americans and your well-being depended on the group getting along, it would be a bad idea to express any opinions. It would be an even worse idea to actually have them. In polite conversation with new acquaintances, the three forbidden topics are religion, politics, and sex, even though these are the things which are most genuinely interesting, or at least the surest signs of people who have gotten to know themselves and developed into full personalities. This unwritten rule of polite society can be summed up as: don’t have opinions. Worse, this can be boiled down to: don’t be yourself. Carried to its logical conclusion it means: don’t exist. Since these are the laws under which we live from childhood on, many people do indeed fail to exist, having no character or uniqueness (even if they do persist in creating Facebook accounts so they can write about their non-selves).

For many Americans, this undeclared law against existing is everyday life at the workplace – not only the alienation of the work itself, but the co-habitation of the workplace with other coworkers. In the activity which occupies one third to one half of our waking hours, the unwritten rules expect us to adhere to a strict non-participation in society’s exchange of ideas and culture. Once more these arbitrary impersonal relationships reduce our consideration of other people to hostile objects which merely obstruct us instead of as humans with whom we can share life. Work is one of the most dangerous places to be yourself. Fortunately we get to go home after work. Unfortunately the family can be even less welcoming than the workplace to the emerging ideological self. It seems our authentic existence has no refuge anywhere, causing many young people to identify much more closely with their friends, lovers, and occasionally fellow activists whom they have chosen, rather than with their coworkers and families whom they received by arbitrary assignment.

The only way to return to any kind of reality, any kind of “we” and any kind of “I,” is in the uphill battle against our condition. The only way to resist our alienation is through common struggles to challenge policies, situations, or hard-to-finger vibes that hold us down. Interestingly, any serious attempt to overthrow our condition of isolation must begin with the very goal to which we strive: common cooperative creative effort. In isolation, we are ghosts and objects in a bureaucratic hierarchy. In the process of gathering to challenge our circumstances, we are in-the-flesh human animals in a living democracy. In order to struggle against our isolated and powerless situation, we must overthrow its echo in our own minds, solipsism and separation from reality. This is not simply a change of perceptions but also means becoming mentally engaged in the world, in its culture, its politics, its news, its economics. This ideological shift is in turn itself a partial overthrow of a materially solipsistic and nihilistic condition. By weaving reality and humanity and ourselves back together in our minds, we make an important real step in weaving them back together in reality. It is, however, not the last step by any stretch.

Is picking up a sign and chanting an instant cure for the lack of authenticity, human closeness, and authentic human closeness in our lives? Absolutely not. There are no instant cures. The answer is a way of life, a lifelong striving to fight for yourself and fight for others; a lifelong struggle against the divisions between each of us as well as our lack of control over our economic lives. Such a struggle requires a lifelong striving to understand the world – its structure, its history, its buzzing present; a life of watching the news, reading history, thinking about that true science of everyday life known as economics, thinking about politics and why people do what they do, believe what they believe. We must live a life of all the difficulties of working with people, making mistakes, getting feelings hurt, and enduring disappointing failures, but also the occasional golden victory to share and celebrate, and the new conquered and liberated spaces where we can be ourselves, with and through each other.

NJ TRAILER PARK RESIDENTS FIGHT EVICTION AND WIN

NJ TRAILER PARK RESIDENTS

FIGHT EVICTION AND WIN

by Matt Hoke

When Carol Lynn trailer park resident Al Ripa received a letter in the mail kicking him off his land, it didn’t surprise him. Ripa had never received as much as a friendly word or even a notice in the mail from his landlord Anthony Saduk in over sixteen years of living at Carol Lynn. But to other residents of the southern New Jersey trailer park, the letter was completely unexpected – one old woman suffered a heart attack upon reading.

Technically they weren’t eviction notices, but they might as well have been. Carol Lynn Resort had been advertised in 1978 as the only year-round trailer park in the area, which by the letter of the law was false advertising. For whatever reason, Carol Lynn exists in a legal limbo. On paper it is a seasonal resort, but with the petty requirement that for three months out of the year, residents would have to take a week-long vacation. In practice, Carol Lynn “Resort” is home to about three hundred permanent households, consisting mainly of disabled senior citizens and low-income workers.

The letters sent out to the residents in July informed them that New Jersey State Department of Community Affairs (DCA) now designated the wiring in certain trailers as a fire safety issue if inhabited permanently. Landlord Saduk, also a member of the Woodbine city council, informed the residents that he intended to enforce these regulations, and that as of November 1^st, 2009 the water would be shut off and the front gate would be locked. Throughout the course of the affair Saduk hid behind the idea that these had apparently been the rules all along, even if he had happened not to enforce them. Low-income and disabled people who had been living on the site for over a decade were surprised to learn that they suddenly lived on a seasonal resort. Without the money to get up and go, living in trailers not built to be easily moved, the notices were practically a death sentence to some residents. One Tennessee woman had sold her home and moved to Carol Lynn believing it was a year-round site just before summer. Some residents curiously observed that Carol Lynn seemed to be the only site in the state where these regulations were being actually enforced.

Realistically, some changes in the management staff and market conditions allowed owner Saduk to attempt a land grab, forcing the impoverished residents of Carol Lynn off of their sites while real estate was selling hot. Resident and informal leader of the fight-back, Al Ripa, calculated that Saduk could have made more than $45 million from the maneuver. Heavy construction equipment loomed ominously around the park, ready for renovations.

Al Ripa, a retired US Marine and senior citizen, wasn’t about to roll over and take it. Though he had the money to move and had been meaning to head for Florida anyway, Ripa couldn’t stomach the idea of walking away and letting it slide. He was concerned for his friends who physically and financially simply could not move. He said, “What if I threw my dogs out on the street? They’d arrest me for animal abuse. That’s exactly what he’s doing to these senior citizens.” Besides, the evictions were just one more example of trends he had witnessed for years:

They’re a bunch of high-class society suckers who don’t give a damn about working people. All the rich people in this country forget they wouldn’t have all that money if not for working people. We should fire ‘em all from their positions and replace them with workers.

They never have the money for what you want…but when they need to put a building up, or a pay raise, there’s money.

I’m not anti-American, but I’m scared of this government. You never know if one day they’re gonna just come in here and throw you on the street…There’s gonna be a war in this country.

But Ripa, a Marine, was ready for that. The day the notices came out, he began going door to door with plans to crash the next Woodbine city council meeting. Most residents instantly agreed. Some began going door to door with the news themselves. A few sighed and warned Ripa that he was wasting his time and there was probably nothing that could be done about it – mainly those for whom Carol Lynn was only a vacation home.

Within two days the entire trailer park had gone from despair and outrage to a determined anger. Ripa’s trailer became the movement’s headquarters, a buzzing hive of visitors constantly coming and going with ideas about what to do, questions, doubts. Ripa said that a handful of residents half-jokingly named him “the mayor.”

When the city council meeting came on July 17, the air was thick with tension as well more than fifty furious residents packed the usually dull and empty chamber. As if trying to spark the gasoline, landlord and councilman Anthony Saduk opened the public comment session by saying that he could not comment on any discussion related to the trailer park. This was followed by an immediate outburst from the gallery.

The meeting consisted of resident after resident taking their turn on the floor, verbally pounding Saduk for his cruelty and greed while the councilors fidgeted over their relatively light security. Cameras flashed and journalists from local papers jotted down quotes from the torrent of anger. Each resident’s tirade was fueled by Saduk’s arrogance in unconditionally refusing to even speak to the people whom he was trying to destroy, first at the trailer park and now in public.

The mayor of Woodbine, NJ William Pikolycky made the sad mistake of going to bat for the landlord who had excused himself from the conversation on cheap legalistic grounds. At the end, the caucasian Saduk said the meeting was a “lynch mob.” When asked about that comment, Ripa smiled, shrugged and nodded. It was hard to blame him.

Over the intervening weeks Ripa had several phone conversations of similar tone with state officials, including the state Department of Community Affairs chief Joseph Doria. He warned them, “Don’t you know that this is on YouTube?” He reminded them that election season was coming, and that via the internet, friends and relatives as far away as Canada and the west coast knew about the situation.

In a bizarre stroke of fate, news swept New Jersey shortly thereafter that police had rounded up forty-four people in a corruption sting, involving mayors taking bribes, laundering money, and even selling kidneys. NJ Governor Jon Corzine asked Doria to resign behind the scenes. Doria complied. This of course does not prove that Doria may have been taking money from landlords in order to write regulations that could help them evict their stubborn tenants – but it sure doesn’t help the suspicion. Widespread acknowledgement that New Jersey politicians are for brazenly sale also happens to make getting the rules re-written a little easier.

The next gathering to crash was at the office of Democratic NJ state senator Jeff Van Drew. He had pledged to help out the situation. The faces of the crowd set the mood – Van Drew had better come through with something and not try to justify the inhumane rules, or else he would have to face the wrath of the residents as well. After ominously trickling in group by group on the hot, muggy day, about eighty people had gathered to see what this man who claimed to be on their side would say and do. After being told by the county government to “get a lawyer,” they had reason to be skeptical. Some of them were wearing uniforms from low-paying jobs. Many of them leaned on canes, walkers, sat in wheelchairs. A shaded pavilion was reserved for those who needed it. The eighty present stood for more who were too disabled to attend or were asleep after their long night shifts.

Van Drew said that with Joseph Doria’s resignation, the DCA was pliant to popular demands. He had also done some research, and learned (completely coincidentally at this moment of rage and publicity reaching a critical mass) that it was really up to the municipalities to define the regulations for seasonal sites. The Woodbine mayor also happened to be there to announce that Woodbine regulations would now revert to the old rules, which effectively made Carol Lynn a year-round trailer park once again.

A few questions were asked in order to clarify the legalese. There was a moment of suspense as the residents wondered – could it really be? – if at the bottom of all the doublespeak was the fact that they could stay in their precious homes. As the questions were answered, they realized that yes, they were not being thrown onto the streets.

Across the yard swept a breath of relief. As Van Drew’s speech ended, one by one people began turning to each other and talking. Every other conversation started off with one person saying: “Well, we actually won.” A few were crying.

One keen-minded resident said that this was good but it wasn’t over yet. When asked why, he said “Saduk is vindictive, he’s retaliatory…he wants his money.” He then went from person to person spreading the idea of a tenant’s union.

At first Senator Van Drew appeared to be playing the role of people’s champion. That may have even been his intention in his own mind. Either way, he also played the role of damage control for a state government and status quo whose legitimacy is reeling in the face of corruption scandals. He addressed the crowd like he was scolding a wild animal out of its temper tantrum, as if their anger was somehow inappropriate. He said “don’t lash out at the people who are trying to help you.” Nobody had been lashing out at Van Drew himself, so what exactly was Van Drew trying to protect other than faith in a system that almost destroyed the lives of the Carol Lynn residents? Who were these invisible helpers that the residents had offended? Almost nobody of status had taken their side. The Woodbine mayor, likewise, was not a consistent populist. He defended and even spoke for landlord Saduk in the beginning and obviously only caved under the withering mass anger and growing publicity.

In mid-August the residents voted to create a chapter of the New Jersey Tenant’s Organization in order to take on other grievances which had been collecting and building over time. Not least of the complaints is a $700 increase in maintenance fees in the course of one year (with maintenance often not done), which some residents believe is also part of Saduk’s plan to clear people out. A few residents have also faced harassment, such as one who was told that his shed was two feet in height over regulation – and then after working on it was told that it was still two inches too tall and that the owner had to reduce it in two days or be evicted.

But all in all, the people of the trailer park stood their ground. The threatening construction machines disappeared. Those who seemed on the surface to be the most powerless people in Cape May County, New Jersey flipped the situation around, denying the will of a landlord politician and contradicting the New Jersey state government itself.

With Democratic representatives giving up ground in the healthcare and same-sex marriage debates faster than you can say “white flag,” people are finding that if they want to be treated right, they will not be able to rely on the leadership of politicians. But this is not a recipe for despair. The residents of Carol Lynn have led the way and showed us all that if we take a hard line, organize ourselves independently and stand up, we will win. Ripa kept this foremost in his mind during the whole struggle, and wants the world to know what the residents’ victory means:

I been saying for years, we got to stand up, we got to take it back, and it’s not gonna take one or two people. If it was one or two people they’d laugh at you, ignore you. But this is an example of lots of people getting together and making it happen.

I crashed a “Tea Party.” My experience.

On the 4th of July, a bunch of conservatives had “Tea Parties,” where they find an area with water, hold a rally in which they rail against taxes, liberalism, and socialism, and throw tea bags in the water to invoke the memory of the Boston Tea Party. What a bunch of revolutionaries. /rolleyes
I crashed their tea party and spoiled their day.
It was a very rich and educational political experience.

I had two signs, two T-shirts, and a button, which I alternated.

• Sign: “INDEPENDENCE FOR IRAQ: withdraw all troops, close all bases, save $3 trillion!”


• Sign: “LEGALIZE GAY MARRIAGE/there is no democracy/without equal civil rights”


• Shirt: “FUCK WALL STREET/I’d rather have healthcare”


• Shirt: The other had a picture of Obama laughing and dropping pennies:
  “Thanks for your vote/here’s your change”


• The button simply said “glbt ally”

I wore a very wide reflective shiny pair of sunglasses to look badass. It would be me against the world so I could use the psychological edge.

As you can see, my signs were designed to expose the tea-baggers and their hypocritical nature. They don’t support “freedom” – they don’t support civil rights for gays. They’re happy to get taxed $3 trillion if a conservative is doing it and it’s for war – not if it’s a Democrat for social services. They all rail against big institutions like the Government and Wall Street, and my T-shirt tried to show them that they shouldn’t oppose socialized healthcare since passing it would be an attack on Wall Street. Hypocrites. I definitely made them uncomfortable.

My objectives:

• Demoralize them by breaking their unanimity. The people at those tea parties are possibly the future of the possible emerging American fascist movement. Best to make them second-guess themselves before it gets that far. (achieved)


• Creating a pole of attracting for opposition, emboldening anti-tea party hecklers. (achieved)
  Exposing their hypocrisy to passersby, and maybe themselves. (both achieved)


• Convincing perhaps a handful of tea-baggers or hostile passersby that socialism is not the enemy, and indeed is possibly the answer. (…probably not achieved)


• Recruiting to the ISO, or at least spreading readership of Socialist Worker. (neither achieved)


• Building my political nerve, capacity to be physically present and psychologically stable in the face of overwhelming opposition, and handling/countering heckling from crowds which may be hostile. (achieved)


• Begin countering the tendency among leftists to be utterly afraid to challenge anything with an American flag on it, and to challenge right-wingers at their most confident moments, when they think they will gather uncontested. (achieved)

At first I walked in, wearing simply a blank white shirt with my political ones in my backpack, and with my signs folded up so no one could see. I wanted to drift through the crowd and check out what the sentiment was before I launched my attack.


Their signs said…
“Audit the Fed!!” (I told the sign-holder that I absolutely agreed with him)
“SOCIALISM: $787 billion/CAPITALISM: PRICELESS” (I corrected this guy later)
“No more tax funds for abortions/protect human baby rights”
“Say no to Obama-care! No national healthcare!” (Call Congress, phone number, etc.)
“Madoff got 150 years, we’ll give Obama only four years”
“The new face of slavery! (Obama’s face) Heavy taxes=heavy load/
This is Obama’s new plantation!” (All slavery references by middle-class white people are clearly racially motivated by reverse-racism paranoia or outright racism…more on their racism later)
“Enforce our immigration laws!” (again, I will cover the racism later)
“Stop the generational tax/we pick up the tab” (held by younger people…good point)

And the absolute best…
“SUPPORT THE TROOPS/WE’LL NEED THEM FOR THE COUP!”
I later shouted at the teenage female holding this sign that she was doing a great job supporting democracy on the 4th of July by supporting a coup against an elected official. Jesus Christ. My confrontation left her knowing that her irresponsible talk of right-wing insurrection would not be welcome among the general public. (Of course, I do the same thing from the left wing by calling for workers’ revolution. Heh.)

Unfortunately very little in the way of outlandish clothing. Just one conspiracy theorist in an old-fashioned three-tipped colonial-era hat.

I heard some old guy on a microphone which was too quiet giving some extremely unlively speech which did include a statement that we are all slaves. He had some vague, unconvincing analysis of when we lost our freedom…something about difficulty in starting up small businesses. Loser. I checked out everyone’s sign, made small talk, and had some signup sheet shoved at me. I signed it Jake Black, gave Jake a fake Gmail address and passed it on.

Early in the rally, conflict arose, started not by me. The Tea Party was happening adjacent to a restaurant. An old veteran wearing a baseball cap that said “Obama” and had American flag designs started shouting at them. I couldn’t tell what he was shouting but he was hopping mad.

After the old man in the Obama hat opened up the debate, I figured that the battle was already raging so it was time to come out of the closet. I put on my “FUCK WALL STREET” shirt and went up to the porch and unfurled my Iraq sign. They all knew what side I was on very quickly.

Once I was clearly involved in the argument, one of the people arguing with the old guy (all of them seemed to be vets) asked if I was ever in the military. I said I never was and (emphatically) I definitely never intend to be. He said that it was the military that defended my right to even state my opinion. I said no, it was labor warriors, like the Anarchists who fought for the 8-hour day in the 1880s and the Communist Party who fought for my wages in the 1930s. Because what’s free speech if you’re working or starving all day? They didn’t like my answer. They called me a socialist. I confirmed that. They didn’t know what to say to that. One told me to move to Russia. I said if he thought the USA was socialist, maybe he should move there. A lot of stammering after that one.

One of them said that if we withdrew from Iraq “we would give them another victory” like in Vietnam. I repeated his ridiculous claim – “give them another victory?” I said I would be happy to give a victory to a country that has its own people and deserves their own sovereignty. He shook his head, he didn’t like that idea. (?)

A woman who I later saw holding an anti-immigrant sign approached me while holding my gay marriage sign and asked if I had ever read the Bible. I said I had and I found it pretty unconvincing. She then shouted that I needed to really read it, implying that I obviously hadn’t read it for real…like I just said I had. Then she kept railing that God did not permit what my sign called for, and I just kept telling her that I didn’t care what the hell God said because I didn’t believe in him anyhow. Religion was not the dispute I came to start…I wanted to focus on economics, foreign policy, and civil rights. But as I am increasingly seeing, God damn it, religion is an issue in politics, as I am sure I will see in the gay rights fight coming to TCNJ. I still don’t think that it is the job of socialists or any progressives to make a case for atheism but I can better understand the argument for atheism as one (of many) progressive forces.


After that died down a bit I talked to him. He was a true progressive, he supported everything my materials said. Seemed to wince when I mentioned socialism to the other side, so I didn’t bother asking for his contact info.


I then passed to the other side of the street, because I figured that the restaurant owner would kick me off their porch soon if I didn’t do it first myself. Also I wanted to clearly distinguish myself from the tea party for passersby and be able to interact with them.


A disturbingly high amount of passing cars were giving sympathetic honks to the tea-baggers, though a few people really liked my gay marriage sign. I realized that a lot of people were probably just honking at the tea-baggers because they were waving American flags, and didn’t realize that it was a conservative rally. A Latino family on a second-floor balcony across the street was watching casually, occasionally cheering whenever someone waved an American flag. I noticed some anti-immigrant sentiment in the tea party, so I figured maybe the Latino family was also in this situation. I walked over to talk to them, from the ground-level sidewalk. I showed them my signs, and explained I wasn’t with the tea party, and just what exactly the tea party was. When I told them it was sort of an anti-Obama rally they looked very upset. They liked my causes, pretty unanimously said they wanted out of Iraq (even brought up Afghanistan) and supported gay marriage. They basically switched over to my side.

In fact, when some tea-baggers crossed to my side of the street with flags and other crap to try to diminish my presence to passersby, the Latinos shouted to me that I should hold my turf and keep them off “my” side of the street. I said I was all alone, maybe they should come down and help me.

Four of them...did. Four of their young guys came down, fanned out, crossed their arms and gave dirty looks to all the tea-baggers on my side until they chickened out and went back to their side of the street. They did this with almost tactical precision, in formation, like it was something they did on a regular basis. More likely they just had chemistry, they were family.

There are no words. What an awesome, spontaneous display of both solidarity and bad-assery.

Occasionally the Latinos would heckle the tea-baggers and yell something like “Go Obama!” A passing tea-bagger on a bike replied:
“You need to fuckin’ learn to speak English.”
(They were speaking fine English in American accent.)
I called after him that he was racist. Didn’t seem to bother him.

Soon enough a car full of Latinos would roll by shouting and heckling, calling them all “racist motherfuckers.” Totally deserved.

There was definitely a political race line. There was not a single Black or Latino on the tea party side. Most of them I encountered checked out what I was about and were all glad I was there.

The pro-life woman yelled at me that maybe I should read some of the history of this great country and see what it was really about. I informed her that I am in fact a history major. She said then why are you saying such ridiculous things. I said I could because I am certified to do so.

When I heckled the kid for her pro-coup-against-Obama sign, she told me that what I was proposing (gay marriage) was just unnatural. I told her that her iPod was unnatural.

Various people said they would pray for me. I almost sarcastically told them that I would pray to Satan for them too, to get a rise, but I bit my lip on that one, since there were some of them with whom I actually wanted to try communicating.

Sparked by my Iraq sign, someone across the street said that I could thanks George W Bush for the “current independence” of the people of Iraq. I said they weren’t free under Saddam, they’re not free now until the last soldier and based and oil company leaves, and the only way they’ll be free is if they do what the people of Iran are doing, and that’s the only answer. Nobody had a response to that since everyone loves the Iranian uprising except stupid Stalinist assholes like Workers’ World Party.

I was holding the gay marriage sign and a tea-bagger leaving on bike confronted me:

Tea-bagger on a bike: “This isn’t San Francisco.”
Me: “I’d like to make it that way.”
TBoaB: “This ISN’T San Francisco.”
Me: “It will be. Change is coming. Get ready.”
TBoaB: (frustrated grunting)

So many of these bastards just want to hit you with these thought-terminating clichés: “this is the way it is, this is the way it will stay.” “Ni**ger-lover” is also just such a fruitful-conversation-ender. They just try to intimidate you with strong but empty statements. So just stand your ground, hit them back with your own strong stance, a fact or two, and they completely fold. These people are made of nothing.

One woman leaving the Tea Party tried to tell me (because of my gay marriage sign) that children need a mother and father figure each. I asked why, she moved on. She said that homosexuality is unnatural. I told her that her polaroid camera is unnatural. She said God gave us brains to invent, so I countered, yes, we invented homosexuality with our brains. Then I admitted I wasn't religious so I couldn't really argue that anyway. She said she would pray for me. She said there was probably something that happened in my past that made me gay...I informed her I was straight. She was astounded by that.

The owner of the restaurant I was standing near came out and complimented my “Legalize Gay Marriage” sign. Probably has gay clientele.

I drifted back over to their side of the street.


I tried having a real discussion with someone across the street. I wanted to at least try to connect to some of the tea-baggers on the basis of discontent with the bailout and the economy. I approached the man whose sign said “SOCIALISM: $787 billion/CAPITALISM: priceless.” I explained to him that I am a real socialist and that I was totally against the bailout because it was taking money from the poor to the rich.
He tried telling me that when I was older and paying bills, what he was saying would make sense. I said that my whole political thinking is based on standing up for real ordinary people who work long hours and pay steep bills, and that’s exactly why I’m a socialist.
He told me that if you’re liberal when your twenty you’re thoughtless, but if you’re liberal when you’re forty, you’re hopeless. I told him I would come back and find him as a hopeless Marxist in twenty years, and that if I felt like it I could come up with some dumb phrase, too. I didn’t stoop to actually proving I could.
We got to talking about the difficulties of running a small business and I said yes it was true, and said that socialists are in favor of getting rid of a lot of the bullshit they have to put up with, as well as forcing banks to give them cheap loans. (Yeah, that’s true, read “Fascism: What It Is and How to Fight It” by Trotsky.)
He asked me why socialism hasn’t worked very well. I told him that every time people try it, governments tend to shoot the people who are organizing for it. He asked me when such a thing had ever happened in the USA.
I gave him the example of troops being sent in to quash the general strike of 1919 in Seattle. He blamed this event on the dawn of progressivism, and I tried to explain to him that it was the unions getting troops called on them, not the other way around.
He tried to tell me that when he owned a restaurant, his employees loved him. I shrugged and said that some slaves love their masters.
Whatever, nothing good came out of that discussion. At least it was civil.

Sad conversation among right-wingers about why the 2008 campaign failed…McCain too old, Palin too young…or may bad policies, hello? Looking forward to 2012, when “the country will be ready.” (Maybe if Obama doesn’t follow through on enough promises, the country will be nice and hopeless and ready to vote Republican again, yeah.) Republicans are really, really grasping at straws and coming up with no answers.

One old man who was clearly on the Tea-Bagger side complimented me at the end for sticking to my guns, despite being solo. I already knew I had guts but his acknowledgement was gratifying. Respect from the enemy…some of the best respect you can get.

Several tea-baggers said to me that they are actually completely fine with gay marriage, though they did not speak up when the religious fanatics were after me over that issue. This is proof that my tactics worked and I demoralized their side by splitting their sense of unity, even if they just admitted it to me off to the side and didn’t shout it in front of everyone.

I drifted back to “my” side of the street.

It was getting to be the end of the tea party, so it was time for my last, most devious act.
I put my signs down, reached into my backpack, and to the horror of the tea-baggers, and unfurled the RED BANNER OF THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST ORGANIZATION (typed in caps to portray their shock). I asked for five minutes of their time. The pro-lifer (to whom I had previously declared that fetuses are not human beings) just ranted at me that I was out of my mind for a minute. I just smiled because I figured, hey, we’re all a bunch of extremist wack-jobs here. She finished up, and the rest of the crowd seemed polite enough to listen. My speech was very short and simple because I knew they wouldn’t tolerate anything over a few sentences. I totally made it up on the spot, and went something like this:

“People of the Tea Party,
I am not here to insult you. There is just something I would like you to know.
I know that many of you are here because you are upset about taxes.
I know that many of you don’t like the bail-out. You call it socialistic.
Well, I am a real socialist. I am not for Obama.
Obama is NOT a socialist. Obama is a capitalist.
I am against the bail-out because it was taking from the poor and giving to the ruling class, taking from the working-class and giving to rich bankers.
Please keep in mind that real socialists are out there and we want what is best for the working class.
Thank you for your time.”

I neither received nor expected applause, but nobody argued with me. I think they never expected to be confronted with a real socialist who was not their stereotype an evil scheming Jewish conspirator with a job in media or government, but someone who really stood for the working class, whether exploited by their employers or by government intervention. I am sure that some of them will never forget their first encounter with a real socialist.

Some conspiracy nut told me to look up “the creature from Jekyll Island” because he sort of agreed with my complaints against the way the bailout was done. It seems to be a conspiracy theory about the Federal Reserve. A lot of that going around these days. Capitalism is the problem, people, not a single one of its representative institutions. Think systematically.

My ISO signup sheet remained blank. Not surprising. But worth a shot, since my area usually has zero political activity. It was clear very early on that the tea-baggers were anti-socialist as well as anti-ruling class (ugh…). I was hoping maybe someone who disagreed with them would take interest in me. Nope. But I got some support, and I countered their presence and ruined the unanimity of their event. Rock on.

I was worried about the crowd and heckling issues. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to take it, mainly that I wouldn’t be able to keep up and think of things to say quickly enough. I have grown accustomed to quiet environments such as ISO meetings where everything is well-thought-out, nobody interrupts, etc. I prefer going to political meetings with a moderator, and have noticed that my opinion tends to dominate less in clubs without moderators. I think this is because to project a polite image I tend to avoid interrupting, but now I realize that I guess butting in is what I will have to do from now on.
Why? Because the tea party I learned that I can totally handle heckling, quick exchanged, quipping back and forth, conversation-ending statements, all of it. I can handle all of it. I took on thirty to fifty people all by myself and never came up short for an argument, a comeback, a fact, or just the will to keep looking an enemy in the eye, to keep talking to passersby even as the tea-baggers interrupted our conversations.

I can do it. I’m ready to give rabble-rousing speeches to homeless people, rally unemployment councils, and march on city hall to demand food. Given the persisting lack of financial regulation, I am sure the day will come sooner than we all think.
There were no police there the entire time. Interesting that the right-wingers don’t get patrolled the way I always do. I half-expected them to call in the cops just because I showed up.

Again, the best part was when the Latinos came down and defended my turf. My God.

Happy 4th of July, which I will henceforth celebrate as Anti-Imperialism Day. That was, after all, a big part of the idea behind 1776, right?
Solidarity to Iran as its people forges the way forward for democracy and workers’ revolution in the Middle East.