Chief Red Scare


And now it's time for an some advice from the toast of the Creek Nation, Chief Red Scare. The chief does in fact get toasted before giving out advice, though he abhors hor d'ourves the way dog nature abhors a vacuum cleaner. It's a phobia and gets activated by the mention of toast, pate, finger sandwiches ... that sort of thing. The Creeks had an abstract sense of humor when the white man arrived, but got depressed after a short while. They considered it rude to say anything without injecting humor, which means Red Scare combines in one personality what in Europe required both a King and a Fool. Ironically, his advice is generally worthless.

The question for Chief Red Scare today comes from Roxanne of the Gentle Cowherd, who, like many citizens of Northern California, is wondering how she can bring redneck relatives out of hypnosis. Slapping them doesn't work because they're heavily armed and royally pissed off. I sent some friends and clients a link to Bill Maher's piece on "Smart President =/= Smart Country." Roxanne wrote back and asked if I though her redneck cousin in Florida would "get it" if she sent it to him.
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I put the question to Red Scare. Actually I had to channel him. It is Northern California, after all. It's what we do to keep from getting bored at the sweat lodge. My eyes roll back in my head and shift sockets so that the green one is where the brown one should be and the blue one moves into the middle of the forehead. Slowly another face emerges from mine, as multiple personality disorder goes upwardly mobile. Red Scare speaks:
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My feet are my understanding and so are his feet his understanding. The bigger a man's feet, the more spread out, the less likely he is to fall over by accident. I have an uncle with such big feet you can knock him down and he pops right back up like a vinyl Mickey Mouse attached to a bag of sand. Every time he got in a fight he was nearly killed because he wouldn't stop popping back up. He had too much understanding. I had a brother who married a Japanese girl with tiny cat feet and she was always walking alone, at night, in the fog.
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So, Red Scare ... you're saying that once you know how big the feet are you know if he's an arch conservative?
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That's one consideration of course. There are others. When he pisses in the Mohave, does he face toward Colorado or Mexico?
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He's from Florida. I'm not sure that's relevant. What seems more relevant is whether he is reality based, or faith based.
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That's easy to observe. Does he mark the cards and load the dice? I doubt that he's yearning to know what's real and what's not so much as he wants to get along with his friends, and not be sent away from the fire, into the dark to face the Boojum Snark. It will rip his face off and he knows it.
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A Snark is?
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A Snark is a Boojum, you see. The underlying consideration is motivation. Reality comes and goes. If you want freedom then you want to operate under as few laws as possible: the fewer laws the more freedom, but the more abstract the laws. If you want to be obedient this isn't a motivation. You've heard the expression, dumb as a post, but a post from whom? Things are not so obvious once you obviate them.
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I see what you mean, Chief. Can you give an example of one of these abstract laws that replaces a lot of other laws?
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The golden rule comes to mind. It's golden because if you use it you don't need any other rules, but it requires mirror neurons. This cousin needs to consult his doctor and find out if these are missing. That could be the problem.

Another example of an abstract law is that the meaning of any communication is the response it gets, and there is no other meaning. The impression that there is other meaning is in your head and is not part of the communication.

When people have the same things in their heads, this is called cultural affinity on a large but on a small scale it's shortened to cult. Cultural affinity can replace real communication and express a dark side. Actually it's more coffee colored but that begs the question, which, in the end, is looking for a mark. Racism is like one of those monsters in the movies that is mortally wounded, and as it dies you see the evil and the trickery and the lust and the hate appear in the extended death agony, causing its tail to thrash around spasmodically. It can destroy entire movie sets before it finally collapses. In the horror genre that's the money shot.
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And somewhere in the background there is Bill Maher nailed to a tree, and all around him there are sheep, and the shepherds are singing, "Bringing in the Sheep." He rolls his eyes to heaven and writhes in pain. "Sheaths," he whispers. "Not sheep. Why do you torment me?"
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Fade to black.

Posted: Fri - August 14, 2009 at 02:13 PM