Mad Hatters

Hootin’ and hollerin’, so quick to act a fool. Boys will be boys, yeah? As if offering excuses for a history of poor choices makes the ones committed in the present okay. As if it’s impossible for the adults in the room to provide restraint.

How difficult is it to let boys know that symbols matter? That when you step foot out your door into a public space, how you present yourself is no longer completely in your control. What symbols you’ve brought along with you are read and interpreted. Attached to you, their meaning can be reinforced or not, amplified or not, ignored or not.

Wear a MAGA hat while serving food to the homeless at a soup kitchen, that’s unexpected. Wear a MAGA hat while hollering at young girls, seems about right. Wear a MAGA hat, you have a lot more to answer for than simply your own identity and your own presence. Because you’re carrying with you the weight of a tired slogan many of us now wearily associate with white supremacy, racism, xenophobia, and fascism.

It may not seem fair. Especially if you’re caught up in national outrage. Even more crucial for the kids to firmly grasp the concept that symbols have power, both hidden and obvious. Both for the person wearing the symbol, and those confronted by it.

Walk out your door wearing a MAGA hat, there are real consequences. Just as there have been real consequences felt by the application of the MAGA ethos. For the kids locked in cages, or the soldiers who can’t serve their country, or the workers who trudge on without a paycheck.

I personally have yet to come into contact with someone wearing a MAGA hat. Not sure what I’d do, how I’d react. Maybe I’d just laugh in its face. I’d certainly be disgusted, and I feel like I’d know all there is to know about the person wearing the hat because the symbol has been used so repetitively. That’s the power of branding, the bludgeoning of the senses through hyper frequency. They hit us everywhere, and the meaning of the symbol burrows its way into our brains, forever lodged in between memories of weddings and funerals.

Again, it may not seem fair. But that’s where we are.

Interesting follow up via On the Media.

Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose

I first read about these aspects of human motivation in a long article about technology and living forever in the New York Times Magazine. That’s all I know. That, and I like the idea.

Spotify User #126029728

So Facebook bought Spotify, remember? They did, and since I deactivated my account on Facebook, I’m also effected on Spotify. Where now, I’m just a number. A nine digit string of nonsense has replaced my name. My profile photo is still there, so if you’re looking for me and have trouble remembering long strings of numbers, just look for the pink bubble gum.

User #126029728, signing off.

Viking Left

How do we make America better? We look to the Nordics. We craft a social movement by doing these 4 important points:

• Gaining rough agreement among the Left on a vision for a new society 

• Using cooperative ownership models to prefigure that vision 

• Practicing inclusivity

• Maintaining a commitment to nonviolent struggle 

From the book Viking Economics by George Lakey.

MLK Riverside 1967

“When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

– Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Riverside Church, 1967

Branding wasn’t enough and it was more than OK

You pay a lot of attention to what you drink when you’re a kid. Sure, what tastes good is key. But so is who says what’s good. What do the cool kids think? What’s the drink of choice and how can you get some? Soda, juice, milk. But I could never do milk, as hard as I tried. Not even with the help of the ’84 Chicago Bears and all those milk mustache ads. I always thought it was gross. A tall glass of ice cold milk? No thank you. Sorry Bears.

Similarly, the late ’90s at my high school saw the vending machine invasion of OK Soda. And it sure looked good. Long before I really grasped what graphic design was, I wanted it. All those cans inside that vending machine, just wanting to be held. To be used as a status symbol for the next generation of cool kids. Something about that can said it was for me. And I tried like hell to make it so. Except, the soda tasted awful. As much as I choked it down, time after time, with a week or so break in between chokings, I eventually bowed out. I was defeated. Despite the best efforts of the branding, OK Soda was not for me. And I moved on.

I’m glad I did. Because I learned that when it comes to soda, how it tastes is far more important than how it makes you feel. As with so many things in life. Just don’t get sold and you’ll be better off. This applies to cars, clothes, haircuts, beer, music, and pretty much everything else. Learn this lessen: don’t let the advertisers give you shit, live a happy life.

Done and done.

What are you doing here really?

Answer: I prefer to speak in a voice focused in on poetry and beauty but because there are forces out there that have set out to destroy poetry and beauty, I must fight back.