Saturday, January 28, 2012



ANARCHIST THEORY:

DIFFERENT SORTS OF FREEDOM:


My dear mother, God rest her soul, used to regale me with stories of the most stupid family in the patch of geography where she grew up. She was born near Simferopal Crimea and grew up in northwest Saskatchewan where you could go 200 miles to anything that resembled a city. From my point of view a great place to grow up but also a great place to leave at the time of puberty. I was blessed.


Anyways, amongst the tales of the "stupid family" shooting their horses while duck hunting and also shooting themselves in the foot (accidentally believe it or not) there were truly magnificent tales of low brain function. The family usually managed to live just long enough to contaminate the next generation with their genes despite classic acts of idiocy like using a match to see if a gas tank was full (yeah it really happened).


I can remember my own examples of stupidity from the 'Battey' family when I grew up in south central Saskatchewan. Fuck were this clan pests, driving their cattle through the town and refusing to feed their kids rights. There was also their dog "Nipper" who was the meanest dog in the RM. If old man Batty didn't feed his family even on the rare occasions that he was sober you can understand the attitude of the semi-wolf Nipper who mostly lived on what he could kill. One of the kids of this overly productive (in a generative sense), Dale Battey, used to bring the dog to town to bite other kids. Amusement is hard to find in rural Saskatchewan.


Being a kind hearted little kid I took to stealing (or saving) meat from my family to feed to the dog. I'd rather be a little bit hungry than see the dog starve. He sometimes wandered into town without his owners. The dog and I became great friends. One day Battey brought Nipper into town to bite me. Stupid move, speaking of stupidity. Sic em he said while pointing to the only person in the world who had ever shown the dog the tiniest piece of kindness. You could practically see the sparks flying off the dog's head as he weighed his pack loyalty to the animal who feeds him against his fear of his so-called owners. He did nothing and evil Dale booted his ass back all the way to home.


There was a conclusion to this example of stupidity. I owned two cats when I was growing up, Midnight and Bumpy. They were particularly bizarre examples of feline behavior (or rather instructive examples0 as Bumpy kept nursing off her mother Midnight even when she had kittens herself who were nursing off her. Quite normal behavior amongst Felis domesticus actually as is the formation of cooperative groups amongst related cats. Here's to inclusive fitness.


In any case the cats were a team. After his dog refused to bite me Dale Battey was really pissed off, and he figured he could get his revenge by bringing his semi-wolf to town to fight my cats. At that time my cats had a rep. They'd beat any dog in the RM. The older one Midnight would distract the dog by slowly surrendering space while lashing out at his face and making noise big time. At the same time Bumpy would silently sneak up beside the dog, leap on his back and skitter up to the head where she could bite at his throat. It would usually ended with the dog screaming across a field as one cat rode him and chewed on his neck while the other lashed out at his asshole.


Well Battey brought his dog to town, and the cats knew when they were outmatched (the fucker couldn't feel pain in a kill frenzy). One quick look and they did what they had never done before. They ran. They ran up to Battey who was standing by the low back "porch" (kitchen actually) of our house, ran up his body leaving bloody scratch marks behind. They turned around and spit fury at the dog from a safe perch while Battey stood there stunned with blood dripping down his body.. Probably telling him they'd get him by surprise. The poor dog continued to run back and forth frantically barking all the time. By the time my brother and I got up off the ground from where we had been rolling over and over with laughing evil Battey was already booting the dog back to the Battey farm (so-called).



OK, all that being said and indeed it was a lot to be said I prefaced this with the extensive personal story so that the reader cannot imagine that I am unacquainted with "stupidity". In the actual real sense where there are immediate consequences. The trouble with 'political stupidity' is that them punishment for the idiocy is not immediate, and thus its ability to teach is severely reduced.


Recently I have received a "reply" that says I should consider a "general tax cut" as more consistent with libertarianISM than my libertarian socialist view. I cannot agree with that, and, of course, here in Canada we can argue out what "libertarian" means. The stupidity in this debate is the ignorance about what "libertarian" means to the 95% of the world's population who live outside of the USA. The stupidity here is in the arrogant assumption that ones views translate across the world.

1 comment:

Larry Gambone said...

Hilarious story, and no truer words were spoken about contemporary stupidity.