Categorical Aperitif

Absolutely no disrespect intended to a true and kind individual, but I could almost thank Utah Phillips for dying when he did, 'cause man, I really needed to hear his wonderful interview with Amy Goodman today. Highly, highly, highly recommended. It is indeed helpful to be reminded of the Wobblies and the Espionage Act and the Palmer Raids and the patient work of activists who built the more humane society I was lucky enough to be born into (but which I fear I will not die in) and that freedom means the freedom to say "no," even to Johnny Cash, and that it's possible to take "kill your television" literally:

AMY GOODMAN: Utah, you’re known for telling stories, very—well, really opposite from the mass media world today, where a sound bite is something like eight or nine seconds.

UTAH PHILLIPS: Mm-hmm.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you think that has done to the way people learn and understand?

UTAH PHILLIPS: I think that television has had a serious—we’re thinking differently. I’ll watch television once a year just to get kind of an idea of what is happening to people’s minds, or maybe I want to go see the World Series. The frequency of images is so fast that I can’t track it. If I don’t—I don’t have TV, and I don’t like them, so I can’t understand how people can watch them. The frequency of the images is just too fast. I can’t take it all in. Yeah, it is—you’re absolutely right that we’re thinking differently. Television alters consciousness. If it didn’t, they wouldn’t use it. It’s intended to alter consciousness.

Me, the last TV set I had, I shot. I don’t know what commercial importunement drove me off of the pier, but I hauled it into the backyard. It was up in Spokane, Washington, and I got a—had an old Stevens shotgun. I tied a scarf around it for a blindfold and scotch-taped a cigarette to the front and lit it and let it burn an appropriate amount of time, and then I blew a hole through it with the shotgun. It was out there in the lilac hedge, which grew through it eventually. It was kind of pretty after a while. But I have not—you know, I haven’t owned one of those foolish things since.

[...]

I don’t feel pessimistic... There’s simply too many good people right here in this room, too many good people on the street, close to the street, doing too many good things for me to afford the luxury of being pessimistic. I’m going to—I’ll tell people that tonight, damn it. I’m glad it came up. If I look at the world from the top down, from FOX, God help me, or CNN or—there ought to be a CNN Anon to ween people from that idiocy. If I look at it from the top down, I get seriously depressed. The world’s going to hell in a wheelbarrow. But if I walk out the door, turn all that off, and go with the people, whatever town I’m in, who are doing the real work down at the street level, like I said, there’s too many good people doing too many good things for me to let myself be pessimistic about that. I’m hopeful, can’t live without hope. Can you?

Not for long, no, so thank you very much for the simple example of how to find it when I need it, and good luck in the afterlife if there is one. (One Big Union in the sky?)