Neanderpundit

Mean never having to say “What’s that smell?”

Not because he was some revolutionary poet laureate of an important counterculture, because most of that kesey/prankster/ginsberg shit was horsecrap of the first water.

No, I liked Burroughs because he was boringly, predictably, insanely practical. The idea of heroin addiction- and I’ve hung with more than my fair share of junkies- is beyond the comprehension of normal human beings. I have been extremely lucky in my life never to have fallen to junk; the times I have had contact with opiates as painkillers have been trying. It’s not my poison.

I do have my own demons, though, and while they are mild compared to junk, they’re no less destructive. I’ve fought them and continue to do so. SO I felt a kinship with Burroughs when I read Naked Lunch, albeit in the way someone who has taken the train up Pikes Peak feels a kinship with Sir Edmund Hillary.

One thing Burroughs has absolutely spot on is what he calls “The Algebra of Need”. Witness;

If you wish to alter or annihilate a pyramid of numbers in a serial relation, you alter or remove the bottom number. If we wish to annihilate the junk pyramid, we must start with the bottom of the pyramid: the Addict in the Street, and stop tilting quixotically for the “higher ups” so called, all of whom are immediately replaceable. The addict in the street who must have junk to live is the one irreplaceable factor in the junk equation. When there are no more addicts to buy junk there will be no junk traffic. As long as junk need exists, someone will service it.

Sound familiar?

Imagine we could vote out all the statist socialist assholes and all the corrupt morons at once. Would it change a thing?

The junkies would still be there. The morons at all walks of life who “believe” in the junk of socialism and ever growing nanny statism. And the people who cater to them? Get rid of those, and they will all be immediately replaced.

Exactly as, if “Atlas Shrugged”, all those “higher ups” would be immediately replaced. The created junk class, those dependant on the junk of welfare, or medicare, or medicaid, or Obamacare, etc, have the need, and someone will always be there to fill it, no matter what. Do you think for a moment that any junkie ever gave up junk because his supply dried up? No. He found a new supply. And entitlement junkies will always find a new supplier.