Twin Peaks


"Following a dream I had three years ago, I have become deeply moved by the plight of the Tibetan people, and filled with a desire to help them. I also awoke from the same dream realizing that I had subconsciously gained knowledge of a deductive technique, involving mind-body coordination operating hand-in-hand with the deepest level of intuition." Agent Cooper, in Twin Peaks.

My 18-year-old asked me about the television series, "Twin Peaks."

"I think I have it somewhere, on VHS," I said.

"Yea. I saw them at Bianca's and she said if she let me borrow them she'd never get them back."

"That's because they aren't her's. They're mine. Or, they were mine, once."

Because she mentioned the popularity of the series with some of her friends, I went online and discovered that there are sites which discuss it, and the symbols in it. For example, the "deductive technique" Agent Cooper learned in the dream involved setting up a bottle on a log, and having one of the deputies call out the name of each person with the letter "J" in their name (Laura had written in her diary the day before she was murdered, "Nervous about meeting with 'J' tonight") and a brief description of that person's relationship to Laura.

Standing away from the bottle, at 60 feet 6 inches as I recall (if you convert to inches and keep reducing it comes down to "6," so that you get three sixes ), Agent Cooper threw stones at the bottle after each name was read. With one name it hit the bottle but didn't break. With the final one, it shattered the bottle. The deduction worked for who she met with that night, though he wasn't the killer.

The reason David Lynch's series is so popular is that he stimulates the mind beneath what is normally conscious. For example, the original Greek word for "sin" meant, "miss the mark." It just meant that you didn't hit what you aimed at because something deflected the arrow, or the stone, or the intention. To "repent," meant that you thought with a new mind, to rid yourself of what was deflecting your aim. The psyche loves this stuff, and understands it directly, even if it isn't explained.

There was another place in the series when Agent Cooper noticed that seemingly unrelated events unfolded together, and he cautioned the others that when this happens, one should pay close attention. I looked at the news on Thanksgiving Day, and noticed some significant relationships unfolding. They might not seem related on the surface level, but they are at a deeper level.

Yesterday, Milton Friedman, who rebirthed supply side economics (which was popular until it birthed the Great Depression), died of heart failure. Simultaneously, it was the bloodiest day in Iraq since the United States began its occupation of the country. Violence is not only out of control, it is brutal, and people are tortured in horrifying ways. And on the same Thanksgiving Day, drug agents in Atlanta kicked in the door of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston, who shot three of them with her pistol before they gunned her down like a dog. They were wearing bullet proof vests, which are a fashion accessory in government sanctioned home invasions. She died terrified of a gang of thugs who broke down her door. They suffered some bruising. Had she lived she could no doubt have been prosecuted for firing on them.

If Agent Cooper was throwing the rock at the bottle, I think it would break when the deputy introduced Milton Friedman, the man who was responsible for rebirthing the idea that the poor are morally inferior to the rich, and thus government power should shift from the Bill of Rights to the Bill of Lading.

The intention of the Bill of Rights was to insure the citizen protection from the government. No government agent could enter a private residence without going to a judge and getting a warrant, and then presenting the warrant to the resident, so that he or she would know specifically what was being sought. Inherent in this process was the respect for the citizen, as the holder of ultimate governmental power. This has been abridged by the "War on Drugs." The logic goes that if they knock and present a search warrant, somebody might have time to flush the drugs down the toilet or something. So the obvious answer is to do away with Constitutional protections.

And then there's Iraq. No need to even mention how we got into a world of trouble by going around the law, and allowing a man to have the power of law. It frees him up from all that red tape, same as it frees up the cops from all that red tape to just turn them loose with their guns and shock and awe tactics to terrorize people.

In Prescott, the County Sheriff's deputies are pulling over Mexican people for DWM violations. That's "driving while Mexican." One woman know I of was pulled over for doing 37 in a 45. They said she was driving too slow. Then when she produced a Mexican driver's license, they impounded her car. She can't get her car back until she gets an Arizona license, which means with the daily impound fee she can't get it back at all, because she can't get to work without the car, and by the time she could comply, it would be beyond her means to do so.

But who cares? She's one of the poor. And so some impound company, a private company, is getting all these cars from the Sheriff's Department. I'm sure there's no money changing hands here, and that it only looks like they're stealing cars. It would be interesting to see some of these lame brained fucks get pulled over in Mexico and have their thirty thousand dollar SUVs impounded because they don't have a Mexican driver's license. They'd scream like stuck pigs about corrupt third world cops. You know the places, where they have that big divide between the rich and poor.

My ex-wife was pulled over in Kentucky and given a speeding ticket even though she was going exactly the speed limit, and cars were whizzing around her. She had out of state plates. The cop kept her beside the road asking personal questions for almost an hour, in the sweltering heat. She had a dog and cat in the car. There was nothing she could do. When she tried to protest the officer's behavior she found they had it set up so it cost her so much to fight it she could not do so.

There aren't many cops with the sensibilities of Agent Cooper. He's fiction. The truth is that the behavioral cues come from the top down, and there is a corrupt cop running Justice. We have leadership that believes in concentration of executive power, the immorality of poverty, the superiority of the rich, the right to do anything we want, any time we want, to any person or nation in the world, on suspicion of wrongdoing, and absolutely no oversight or legal consequences.

It's not worth collecting news stories about the abuse of power by the police in the United States under the regime of George W. Bush, because they have become too common to be of any value ... just like the people become too common to be of any value once they've surrendered the only protections they ever had ...



"Who's your daddy now?"

Posted: Fri - November 24, 2006 at 02:55 PM