I have always been a fan of burroughs
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.
“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. ”
How do you enslave a free people? Here you are. This is the long road to Serfdom.
You are so right to point out that Rand was an idiot, but I know you’re ignoring the fact that the “people” who went on strike were not really people. What the looters were killing was the drive in the human spirit to create something new out of the raw material God has provided. There is the death cult, hiding in plain sight, at the rotten core of Marxism — and also at the core of corporate Statism (which is what that bitch wound up glorifying).
Very nice analogy, Og. Nail. Head. Hitting it.
I was just nodding my head silently, thinking how I like the Burroughs of Tarzan and John Carter much better.
Guess I like being able to tell my fantasy from the real world by the book cover.
I’ve maintained in my writings on future conflict involving a Second Civil War, that the initial combat will be against armed members of the Gimme class. The dot.Gov may or may not defend them, but when the Gimme Class loses any possible avenue of armed force except the dot.Gov, the righteous right will have played right into the leftist gummint’s hands. The gummint will then have to move against the righteous right resistance, and will be seen by the unarmed members of the gimme class as heroes when they do.
Strategically, this means that in any future conflict, there are TWO real enemies: the entire gimme class, AND the gummint. Success is unlikely for the righteous right resistant remaining at that point……