Isn’t it strange?
You alwyas get the truth from a stage. Not in Parliament, the Congress, the PM, the King or any President. You always hear it from the stage. As you come into an argument with a fundie on either side, most likely, this person would have been brainwashed by some preacher hack in some form. Or an ideology twisted to it’s perverted opposite.
Stand up comedians are having a unique, yet a damned position. Once he makes you laugh, it’s because of your inner fear that the performer might be truthful in his rants. Or you brush it off as a poor joke with an edge.
Since George Carlin kicked the bucket, and is probably in some bar in Hell, bashing it out with Fred Phelps, and Doug Stanhope seem to have gone into hiding, there are still a truthteller putting some clearity on things.
He took a little trip to Pakistan only 5 years ago. I will let him speak in his own words.
This is a joker whom dares to challenge peoples’ prejudices, and his own fears. As a performer, this speech should be taken more into consideration. How about travelling yourself and find out that you have been lied to?
40 years ago any westerner could travel from Europe to India by van, and get high on the journey. Our fathers could get high in Kandahar one night, and be invited to a mosque the next morning. In Iran, youngsters would talk to you and cite Shakespeare, Kashmir, inflamable, but not quite the same obstacle was peaceful. It’s the birth place of Salman Rushdie, and the resting place of a legendary guru in Srinagar.
Today, this kind of journey seems impossible. Unless you’re in uniform and have a death whish.
What certain voices in Europe are crying out now, is a cry of fear, ignorance, intolerance, fobias, ethnocentrism take over what used to be sane minds. These dark forces didn’t dissappear after WW2. It’s just gone underground. And like before sucking out all the senses of the gullible with some sort of lack of cognitive capabalities or the experience of a traveller.
And extreme voices from all corners are screaming almost in unison, demonising each other. Demanding the lines to be drawn, and full mindless loyalty, or be outcasted as a traitor?
Henry Rollins however, seem to not being afraid of telling what people in power don’t want you to hear. He builds bridges where others are burning them down.
Is this history repeating itself, or have we evolved a bit since the last Holocaust?
Let’s see: A climate acting more and more weird. Earthquakes. Floods. Vulcanoes. Wars still going on. Dictators falling and perhaps replaced by another dicator. Religious nutcases saucing in their desert myths into politics and a pope whom still are covering up for priests whom grabs young boys up the ass.
So what is new? Would anybody actually be surprised if Satan is Catholic? Or that more and more people would see how their prophet in chief being nothing more than a Stalin in disguise as a prophet? Paranoid, twisted, powerhungry, bloodthirsty, vengeful and intolerant. And people are still believing in anachronistic incarnations like them. And judge people out from those standards.
Most of us are quite simple in thought: Black or White. Any grey area is almost blashpemy. They believe in the absolute. A ingrown dogma.
The times are truly changing Bob Dylan. And we are today, indeed, living in interesting times.
Remember, 2012 is coming up…:-)
Some things are never changing however. That is how fun it is to mock fundies.
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Bohemianriter1
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