“But this was panic on stilts and steroids. This was a prison riot. The noise from that isolated chamber down below few more insistent. A metal cup raked across the bars. Guards! And somewhere farther up, unseen clammy hands were industriously attaching a nylon strap and winch around the upper portion of Chad’s chest and ratcheting it tight”
Letters Were to be Expected
Morning . . . Letter to the Editor: You gloss over it but it is quite disturbing that the editors of P&R would have even given this a second look let alone a first. Jeff ...
Becoming Thus a Major Part of Mass Society
“Nowhere is the temptation toward exoticism more evident—or more lucrative—than in the burgeoning ‘alternative medicine’ industry . . . ‘alternative’ medicine is big money . . . The concept of alternative medicine is essentially a byproduct of the critique of mass society”
Nation of Rebels, p. 278
To Music We Can’t Hear
“Sunbeams streamed through the slats of the well-adjusted blinds, spotlighting tiny motes wrapping up a hard day of dancing”
Your Great Grandmother on Roller Blades
Introduction: I am afraid that the next chapter of Beyond Authority and Submission is bad enough to make your front teeth ache. It is something of a global embarrassment. It makes you want to ...
Audio Reading of Post
You Can’t Escape the Disease When You Are the Carrier
“Because so much traveling is a quest for authenticity through difference, it quickly becomes yet another locus for competitive consumption . . . When it comes to exotic travel, hell is other Westerners . . . This competition for tourist spots—call it ‘competitive displacement’—has exactly the same structure as hip consumerism. This time, though, the prestigious property being sought is not the cool, but the exotic . . . As more visitors pile into the area, it becomes more ‘touristy,’ less exotic, which ruins it for the people who got there first . . . Thanks to their unceasing efforts at scouring the earth in search of ever more exotic locales, countercultural rebels have functioned for decades as the ‘shock troops’ of mass tourism”
Nation of Rebels, pp. 270-271
Mixed Responses
“How can I protect myself was the interrogative thought of the hour floating around in the about seven of the minds present, although one of the earthier elders, Kenneth by name—not that it matters—was expressing it to himself in terms of covering his white little evangelical hinder parts. The remaining four elders were confident of their pastor’s innocence for all the normal reasons, and they looked at him expectantly, waiting for the next reassuring evangelical cliché, like so many show poodles waiting for their treat”
And Q.E.D.
Which Why There is So Much Fake Authenticity
“As an injunction to be true to oneself, to place the cultivation of the self at the forefront of all concerns, authenticity has become the overriding moral imperative of modern life” ().
Nation of Rebels, p. 270
A Mistake That Has Been Made More Than Once
“Chad had been all aura then—charisma, smiles, and eyes that penetrated what you thought at first was your soul, but then just turned out to be your clothes”