i make the mistake of subscribing to the blogs of a couple of liberal rags- n+1, NY rev. books, etc. and then sometimes i commit the ultimate crime of actually reading the damn things. gets one's hackles up, i tell you.
just finished a scathing little number in n+1 calling for the abolition of the prison system. that's right- total abolition. says that what we've effectively done is outsourced our crime into a system of contained 'hyperhells'- places where the concentration of ne'er-do-wells has overcome whatever threshold allows an equilibrium level of misery, and consequently functions as a positive feedback loop of all the worst things that can happen to people.
which is obviously true, as a simple observation. apparently stalin still beats us in incarceration rate, but only just. all the same, the modest proposal leads one to realize just how interested one is in one's own skin. as a naturally bashful and timorous person, i have to say that the idea of sitting down at a bar next to some enormous peckerwood just let out of walla walla raises the hackles substantially.
but this is exactly the sentiment that gave us human rights violation central in america. the desire for a sort of societal sterility- analogous to the pine-solification of the suburban home. the urge of the bourgeois to purge the unbourgeois.
the difficulty i face here is that i am fantastically bourgeois- a sort of perfection of the form. i'm really only comfortable on capitol hill in seattle, where i can live and work and read in peace, able to walk within my neighborhood to find fine coffees and foods available at premium prices. the only problem here is that some of the hipster people (who are, let's face it, my tribe, so far as i have one) are just too damn flamboyant. those jeans are impractically tight, that 80s ski jacket with the aqua/hot pink paneling is really quite garish and tacky. throws off my equilibrium, you see- i suffer from neurasthenia, like so many of my generation...
(what a fantastic idea- get kate beaton to do "neurasthenia comix" on the poufy young men of the 19th/20th turn of the century!! a la thomas pynchon's obsession with them in against the day)
so who am i to support this? someone with an overdeveloped sense of guilt and moral shame? because, you see, this is exactly what i feel in these moments. SHAME. SCHADE. GROSSENSCHADE. i think that it would be fair to ascribe my entire moral sense to no actual code of ethics or behavior, but rather to the simple fact that the institutions which make my life easy make most people's lives hell. that they are, in fact, designed to do so, because in this country, the people who make rules tend to look like me. and, of course, i participate in these institutions. rules are to be followed, i learned; make that one decision, and things become easy. SHAME.
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