I.

I'm thankful to those who defend me, and I'm not surprised by those who hate me, but either way you are missing the point.   I don't matter.  It's debatable whether my ideas matter, but for sure they matter much more than I do.

I am "Alone."  What does that mean?  It means that no other characteristic should matter to you, the reader, except that there's only me, whatever that is.

I don't write anonymously because I want to protect my career-- most of my work is forensic and it's unlikely the guy whose been in jail for a year awaiting trial for drug possession is going to care about my thoughts on DWTS;  he's got way bigger problems, like how the city criminal justice system isn't merely unfair but quite likely completely unconstitutional.  And I'll say, on my behalf, at least he has someone like me on his side.

I write anonymously so that you aren't distracted by my age or lack of manners or political sympathies.  They don't matter.  If you want to say that narcissism didn't play the crucial part in this maniac's murder of his daughter just because she liked the wrong kind of guy, then we can have a good rumble.  But if you want to say that narcissism didn't play the crucial role because-- I'm white, or single, or drunk; then you're trapped in the generational circuit of illogicity that is the very point of this blog.

II.

I don't blame you for wanting to attack or defend me; that's how we're trained to think about complicated issues.  We're alive in a time where the President's attackers and defenders both assume he is lying, saying "what he has to say."  We don't believe words, we believe identity.  If Obama did it, then it's either definitely good or bad, depending on what you think of him.  Never mind that if you look at what he's done, it looks almost the same as what Bush did.   Wild.   Should've swallowed the red pill.

The Matrix is a great movie but a poor expression of Baudrillard's philosophy. The Matrix is quite straightforward, there's no confusion, no paradox: you're either in the Matrix, or you're in the real world.  You may not know you're in the Matrix, but that doesn't change the fact that you are or are not in it.

A true Baudrillard Matrix would be a single world that became so fake that you no longer needed the original.  The whole world becomes a fake; there is no recourse to the real world.  You'll know it happened when you look at a copy of something, the original of which you have had no actual knowledge, and say, "oh, that's so authentic."  If you are under 47 and think Mad Men is much more accurate about 1963 than Oliver Stone's JFK-- or vise versa-- then you're in the Matrix.  GET OUT.

"Inability to participate in society," lamented Secretary of Socialism Wilkinson, eyeballs deep in the Matrix.  That's what he thinks drives people crazy.  He's right; but the solution isn't a redistribution of income, it's reducing the desire to participate in the Matrix.   Somewhere in the past 50 years or so the media accidentally constructed an artificial reality that was hidden by the on-purpose entertainment reality of TV shows. You look at any of the CSI shows and think, "well, of course this isn't a real representation of actual crime scene investigators."  But it never occurs to you to think as they're arresting a suspect, "since when did it become ordinary for professional cops in their 40s to have no kids, tons of disposable income, and regularly go out on dates that end in sex?  And what the hell happened to body fat?" 

No wonder people think-- feel, experience-- that they lose part of themselves when they have kids.  Or grow old.

Commercials are even worse.   That attractive, well dressed woman who looks longingly at a passing two door Acura ZDX is a synthesis that you resist-- you know that they're selling Acuras, and you're not falling for it.  You're so clever, seeing through it-- you know owning an Acura doesn't make you an attractive well dressed woman, nor will it attract such a woman.    But what you don't realize you're learning is that this is what attractive well dressed women look like.   Acura is selling Macy's.  And Macy's is having a sale; for the right price you can be 25 forever.

That advertising agency probably just wanted to sell some cars today; not change the society you will want to participate in tomorrow.

I guess that's why they say: May the best of your todays be the worst of your tomorrows.

But you ain't thinking that far ahead.

Know what I mean?

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